This week on the urban homestead, it’s Jane Austen meets Laura Ingalls. Apparently, the word’s out: the urban homestead is the place for tea! Jordanne and I hosted another tea party, this time for Jordanne’s friend who’s getting married this month.
It’s been a tootie fruity week here on the urban homestead. We have fruits coming out of ears and what a blessing that is.
The homestead kitchen is hopping- trays of desserts, jars of jams and bowls of ice cream are churning out from the nourishing center of our little universe.
[the] Dervaes Gardens sits practically on top of a Pasadena, California, freeway and is only blocks away from the famous Rose Bowl. Outside are all the trappings of twenty-first-century life: automobiles, satellite dishes, supermarkets, car washes, and stores…
June is the tipping point month were things can either go up hill or downhill … and fast! So far, we are holding steady. Some things are growing well, while others not so much.
The wonderful food from the garden keeps coming. What a tremendous blessings it is to enjoy such bounty that are grown just feet from our table!
Whew doggie! It’s been a busy week here at the urban homestead. Busy with bees (getting ready to harvest some honey!), battling bad bugs, moving the tender greens to cooler spot in the yard and getting things ready for a major can-a-thon.
Funny thing has happened here on the urban homestead! With the recent shacking up of two scrub jays to raised their brood in one of the pineapple guava trees the mocking bird, who last year stole many a flower (potential fruit), is no where to be seen.
Gardening is not a solo job – you rely on a realm beyond your understanding and faith that hard work will bring forth results. But there’s more to that than dirty fingernails and sore backs. It’s about giving back and we implement that practice by “tithing” our first fruits, returning them to the soil from which they came.
Winter, visited us briefly again last week. Thankfully for us it didn’t get too cold ( just windy and nippy)- but for others north of us the unseasonable cold snap along with hail, snow, freeze has devastated gardens and fruit crops.
The cold didn’t last very long temps are going to warm up yet again.
Are [...]
The harvest weigh-in is in for the month of April
Produce (veg, fruit, herbs) – 555 lbs
Eggs (chicken) 83 (duck) 51
2010 Year to Date Tally
Total: 1,220 lbs
Eggs (chicken) 260 (duck) 132
Coming up!
Reckon ya’ll are ready for another pictorial post?
Good little article but there are some slight misstatements. 1.) We grow 99 percent of our PRODUCE not diet 2) We do buy supplement animal feed (grains pellets) oh, and our goal is “ZERO” food miles!
Path to Freedom conserves water while cutting ‘food miles’ from Dervaes family’s carbon footprint
By Carolyn Neuhausen PASADENA WEEKLY
On a quiet [...]
Sorry, a little tardy on posting our harvest totals for February.
Here they are
Produce (fruits, veggies, herbs) 138 lb 13 oz
Eggs Chicken 63 Duck 19
Psst, join our growing (free) social network for gardeners
Though winter is still lingering (there’s a huge storm set to pound the LA area this weekend!), it’s canning time again!
What’s in season is citrus and what’s on the stove top is marmalade! Thanks to a local, organic supply of citrus from Sergio’s farm we gals are back in the kitchen – jammin.
With the versatile [...]
Farmer D kicks off another growing season, inspiring the crowd saying that “big rewards can come from small spaces”
Full house
Keeping busy, I bring along knitting (it’s a scarf if you want to know)
Jordanne takes questions and gives out advice
Certainly was a wet n wild drive down to the OC Fair Grounds in Costa Mesa Tuesday [...]
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
The Year of the Urban Homestead
My sis and I were talking about “the good ol’ days.” And one thing she brought up that I had forgotten was how we were constantly asked, [...]
Come into the urban homestead’s kitchen this time of year and there’s blood splattered everywhere – pomegranate “blood”
Getting to their tangy delicious fruits sometimes causes some uncontrolled spurts (got a direct hit in my eye the other day, stung for a bit) – not to mention staining one’s hands a lovely red color (wonder if [...]
It’s a messy, sweaty, steamy and sometimes sticky work; but the fruits of our labors are certianly worth the hours of labor.
With summer winding down, canning efforts have increased so that our cupboards will be stocked for fall and winter. Here on the urban homestead we try not to purchase any canned food products – [...]
The meals last week were certainly very colorful and tasty. We are still working on using up the huge bag of carrots we harvested a few weeks back so we enjoyed an easy and very delicious carrot salad with almost each one of our meals.
The tromboncino squashes are young and very tender and sweet – [...]
image courtesy of Elements kitchen weekly enewsletter
Look what was in our email box today!
“We Love Freshly Picked Dervaes Greens… We make special salads featuring them, always lightly dressed so their fresh flavors are enhanced. The unique blend of mesclun greens (which might include anything from baby celery leaves to baby arugula or mizuna to kale) [...]
This week we have a few surplus veggies and fruit if you’d like to order.
heirloom tomatoes
italian summer squash (better than zucchini! )
and figs (green and purple)
If any of your local yokels are interested check out DerVaes Gardens and give us a call or email.
Thank you for supporting locally grown!
The weather is still cool for this time of year. I have to pinch myself – can’t believe it’s August!
I’ve noticed too that there’s not been many June bugs either. Spotted only two this week, last year we had a whole army of ‘em – it was like an invasion!
Well, we are just going to [...]
What’s with the weather? Today and yesterday morning it feels like fall? I know the coolness will burn off once the sun comes out but it really doesn’t feel like the August we are so used to.
Jordanne and I were commenting on the sound – it changed. Yeah, sounds funny but it’s not. We can [...]
A Homegrown Revolution Roots In Pasadena (PASADENA NOW)
By TRICIA AREND
Published: Monday, July 13, 2009 | 5:36 PM
Gardener and urban homesteader Jules Dervaes is growing a revolution in his Pasadena home. Dervaes’ little urban garden plot that could has led him to found the Path To Freedom and Little Homestead in the City, a sustainable resource [...]
Having so much flora here on the urban homestead one never really gets to figuring out all the ways one can go about using and preparing all the different parts of a plant- there’s the fruit, flowers, roots, shoots, leaves etc that are edible and even useful but overtime we’ve lost all that know how [...]
Via THE FILM YAP.com
“HomeGrown” is a documentary about a family running an urban organic farm that holds a twofold fascination: The amazing process by which the Dervaes clan reaps such a bountiful harvest from a miniscule piece of land, and the way living in tune with nature binds them together as a family.
Jules is the [...]
Summer means hot temps and fruit, fruit, fruit.
Here on the urban homestead we are harvesting grapes, apples, peaches, blueberries (have a whole ziplock bagful!) and strawberries.
Ripening soon will be figs and elderberries.
For some reason, don’t know if it has to do with the weather but the clusters of grapes contain semi ripe, ripe and even [...]
It’s fruit season here on the urban homestead! Our dwarf trees are loaded with fruit. Coming up next– apple butter, apricot syrup and peach preserves…..
Oh and the blueberries are ripening as fast as we can pick em. We picked over 1 lb – which is a lot of little fruit! YUM.
The June gloom seemed [...]
