At Path to Freedom, the Dervaes family has steadily transformed their ordinary city lot in Pasadena, California, into an integral urban homestead. And, along the way, they are striving to become earth stewards, taking care of the precious gift we all have been given. These eco-pioneers regard their 1/5 acre urban homestead as a sustainable living resource center where they are setting out to live by example while also inspiring others to "just do it!" Their objective is to live as sustainably and self-sufficiently as possible in an urban environment in harmony with nature and each other, while also inspiring others to "think globally, act locally." Their homestead supports four adults, who live and work full time on a 66' x 132' city lot (1/5 acre). The yard has over 350 varieties of edible and useful plants. The homestead's productive 1/10 acre organic garden now grows over 6,000 pounds (3 tons) of produce annually. This provides fresh vegetables and fruit for the family's vegetarian diet and a source of income. The family operates a viable and lucrative home business, Dervaes Gardens, that supplies area restaurants and caterers with salad mix, edible flowers, heirloom variety tomatoes and other in-season vegetables. The income earned from produce sales offsets operating expenses and is invested in appropriate technologies, such as solar panels, energy efficient appliances, and biodiesel processor, to further decrease our homestead's reliance on the earth's non-renewable resources. Over the years, by purchasing energy efficient appliances and using electricity conservatively, the modern homesteaders have cut their energy usage in half. Solar panels have reduced their dependence on electricity by two-thirds and have furthered their goal of energy independence. A solar oven is used to cook food on sunny days. And during the summer of 2005, the family built a cob oven, which is fueled by scraps of wood and twigs to create an energy source for cooking breads, pizzas, desserts, etc. In 2003, the Dervaeses constructed a biodiesel processor from a discarded hot water heater, which enables them to brew low emissions biodiesel (a renewable, nontoxic, biodegradable replacement for petrol diesel) from used vegetable oil to fuel their diesel Suburban, reducing the vehicle's air toxins by 90%. Citified farm animals In addition, these urban farmers share their homestead with a menagerie of animals -- chickens, ducks, two rescued cats, red wiggler worms (which compost garbage) and two goats (Nigerian Dwarf and a Pygmy goat. All the animals are treated with love, care and respect and full attention is given to their comfort and needs. Each breed is carefully researched and selected to fit into our urban homestead lifestyle and housing arrangements are designed for the animals' preferences and needs but with unique, space saving innovations. The family is vegetarian and none of the animals are raised for meat related purposes. Future projects on the "to do list" are the installation of a greywater reclamation system, composting toilet, and a cistern to capture and store rainwater, which would dramatically reduce the use of precious water.
These eco-pioneers regard their 1/5 acre urban homestead as a sustainable living resource center where they are setting out to live by example while also inspiring others to "just do it!"
Their objective is to live as sustainably and self-sufficiently as possible in an urban environment in harmony with nature and each other, while also inspiring others to "think globally, act locally." Their homestead supports four adults, who live and work full time on a 66' x 132' city lot (1/5 acre).
The yard has over 350 varieties of edible and useful plants. The homestead's productive 1/10 acre organic garden now grows over 6,000 pounds (3 tons) of produce annually. This provides fresh vegetables and fruit for the family's vegetarian diet and a source of income.
The family operates a viable and lucrative home business, Dervaes Gardens, that supplies area restaurants and caterers with salad mix, edible flowers, heirloom variety tomatoes and other in-season vegetables. The income earned from produce sales offsets operating expenses and is invested in appropriate technologies, such as solar panels, energy efficient appliances, and biodiesel processor, to further decrease our homestead's reliance on the earth's non-renewable resources.
Over the years, by purchasing energy efficient appliances and using electricity conservatively, the modern homesteaders have cut their energy usage in half. Solar panels have reduced their dependence on electricity by two-thirds and have furthered their goal of energy independence. A solar oven is used to cook food on sunny days. And during the summer of 2005, the family built a cob oven, which is fueled by scraps of wood and twigs to create an energy source for cooking breads, pizzas, desserts, etc.
In 2003, the Dervaeses constructed a biodiesel processor from a discarded hot water heater, which enables them to brew low emissions biodiesel (a renewable, nontoxic, biodegradable replacement for petrol diesel) from used vegetable oil to fuel their diesel Suburban, reducing the vehicle's air toxins by 90%.
Citified farm animals
In addition, these urban farmers share their homestead with a menagerie of animals -- chickens, ducks, two rescued cats, red wiggler worms (which compost garbage) and two goats (Nigerian Dwarf and a Pygmy goat.
All the animals are treated with love, care and respect and full attention is given to their comfort and needs. Each breed is carefully researched and selected to fit into our urban homestead lifestyle and housing arrangements are designed for the animals' preferences and needs but with unique, space saving innovations. The family is vegetarian and none of the animals are raised for meat related purposes.
Future projects on the "to do list" are the installation of a greywater reclamation system, composting toilet, and a cistern to capture and store rainwater, which would dramatically reduce the use of precious water.
I wish everyone would quit saying "it can't be done" and pay some attention to the people who are already doing it. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Just as we had feared - you kind of sense these things in your bones. The news this morning is devastating. Not a good start to the new year and upcoming planting season. We still haven't rebounded from the hottest summer on record where we lost 90% of our heirloom tomato crop ( our most important cash crop that pulls us through fall and winter) More recently having to deal with the big chill which wiped out the entire winter crop and set us back months. Now with forecasters predicting a dry year the plants are going to suffer not getting the deep down moisture that we so look forward to in winter. It's going to be another long and difficult year, which I suspect will bring on quite a few changes in our lives.
Also, UK conditions are very different to Californian ones. We get much less sun here, much sharper winters - frost is normal, not exceptional - and a much shorter growing season. And we get a lot more rain. The usual Euro problem is that incident energy is much lower, so things grow more slowly. Not even Findhorn could match these people. ;)
Corn might work here, squash and root crops will, beans will, tomatoes will, berries will, but oranges and lemons won't, and the growing season for fruit is much shorter. I can imagine nuts - useful for protein balance - filling in as a high-calorie alternative.
Even so, 1/5 of an acre is an unusually large garden by UK standards. Allotments - small off-site vegetable gardens - are a popular hobby here, but the average size is something like 1/20th.
I suppose if lawnorder breaks down and there's a mad scramble for land, things might rearrange themselves.
you are the media you consume.
the Dervaes family is where it is, doing what it can do; I wouldn't have picked LA myself due to the precarity of the water supply, but it's where they found themselves. I coulda picked on any of a thousand or so other examples out of the literature -- people reversing desertification by permaculture planting out in Arizona; people reversing soil pollution (all over the place) by using brassicas, composting processes, and fungi to extract or convert toxins...
and yeah, suburban lots are larger in the US than in many countries. which makes the US, paradoxically, a more promising place to relocalise food gardening... even while it is the kingpin nation of corporate food. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
The American suburbs are my favorite example. The idea of abandoning them is ridiculous - if it comes down to it, you start putting two or three families in one house, abandon certain houses and subdivisions, and fill in with farms. The near-term doomers have a comical over reliance on assuming that there will be no adaptation.
In the medium term I still think Europe is better off - in a world of declining (but not critical) energy resources, infrastructure efficiency becomes the main variable in determining your (mostly material) quality of life.
the real problem is the quality of construction, for whuch in many cases "gimcrack" would be too kind. w/o endless inputs of repair/maintenance I don't see the average carburb home standing up well over a 40 year period. the structures are so flimsy that they rely on high-tech and lightweight roofing materials -- anything heavier wouldn't be borne by the spindly little wall joists. I imagine that creative survivalist families and townships would encase the entire structure in strawbale and adobe (or cob or whatever was locally available) to improve insulation and create a stronger perimeter to support more traditional roofing materials... but this is idle speculation and more appropriate for a sci fi story than our immediate discussion... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
nice phrase. moi aussi.
it's one thing to watch the crowded bus roaring straight at the brick wall and still accelerating... that's fatalism... what's angry-making is that it's a small freestanding brick wall in the middle of a huge coordinate grid of other choices; knowing that the crash could easily have been avoided (where "easily" is a function of "preventing a bunch of greedy psychopaths from constructing our social reality"), that's (for me) the angry part... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
fate rage....
it would be easy, if all were on board.
i see it as a communication challenge.
like speaking japanese to turtles, but more fun.
and hopefully a better payoff ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
We tend to have a mental picture of the US and Europe as being eye-to-eye so to speak, but have a look at any map and you'll see that the US is noticeably south of Europe (15 degrees on average, maybe?). The Mediteranean is temperate but Caribbean is subtropical. Madrid is on the latitude of San Francisco (and New York). Oslo is on the latitude of Anchorage. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
The UK has a population density 8 times that of the US, so people might get less than 1/20th of an acre. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
Google says there are about 14 million arable acres in the UK, and 60 million people. Assuming families of 4 - a bit of a stretch - that's around one acre per family.
