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"How, after planting a garden, can you keep the harvest growing year after year? The path to fruitfulness is to invest in your most valuable resource the soil and not treat it like dirt! The most basic step you can take now to boost productivity is to put back into the soil what has been taken out of it. Because the earth needs to be kept alive, it must be fed regularly with organic waste matter to renew the vitality of the soil. Thus, in order to maintain a garden's fertility, it is necessary today, tomorrow and always to compost."

- Jules Dervaes

The wet weather does help the garden but it doesn’t help the produce business.  It’s hard to pick produce, especially salad, in the rain. The front porch farm stand is quiet;  but we did have a very large order this week which helped pull us through.  The Chef at Cal Tech put on a special “Meet the Farmers” dinner featuring many a dish made with our very own homegrown produce.

As city farmers, we make a living off and from the land, so we are thrilled to have a new local client, especially after long time customer Elements unceremoniously dumped us.

With such a special dinner featuring a few dishes from “Dervaes Gardens”, we had to get out there and pick even in the rain.    And this order pretty much “cleaned us out” of surplus produce for the week; but at least we made our "daily bread" for the week and that was truly a blessing.

Featured at the dinner was our “world famous” Salad Mix along with the heirloom Italian summer squash and winter squash (you can get the seeds from our little seed company - FreedomSeeds.org)

We set up a little farmers market in the patio area featuring a few items from our farm. But before the expected 175 dinner guests showed up,  we were able to take some photos of the incredible buffet spread and meet the staff.

I hadn’t seen so much food, in well, awhile!  Tables were lined with all sorts of culinary delights and it was really nice to see our three homegrown items featured so prominently

The Chef and staff were incredibly friendly,  talking about how much they enjoyed preparing the squash for this weekly dinner event for the Cal Tech and JPL people.  Our produce was picked up at 11am and it was served at 6pm. Talk about super fresh!

After dinner, folks moseyed on over to our table telling us how much they enjoyed seeing us there and raving over the amazing squash they just had.      Food has a story (and that evening, a face), so we shared how we picked the salad and squash in the rain just hours before.

Of course, they wanted to know “now, where exactly is this farm located?”  You should have seen their faces when we informed them just a mile or two up the road!

As farmers, even though we eat our own produce all of the time,  it’s always great to get a chance to see the produce you grew used and appreciated!  Although we made only a handful of sales that night, we hope that dinner patrons that evening will remember to support our front porch farm stand in the future

Thanks, everyone, for a special evening!

Now for some pics!

Young tromboncino squash (www.FreedomSeeds.org)

Who's that picking in the rain?

Farmer D introduces himself and tells the staff about our little farm in the city

Chef Leo

Getting the buffet ready for the dinner guests

Dining hall

The older tromboncino squashes made a great winter squash dish

Baked tromboncino squash (www.FreedomSeeds.org)

Mixed salad greens

The tromboncino squash was the squash of the evening!

Buffet spread

There's our salad again!

Tabling out in the patio

Patrons enjoying dinner on a cold, drizzly October evening

]]> http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2010/10/21/meet-the-farmers-dinner/feed/ 2 http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2010/07/12/farming-in-the-city/ http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/2010/07/12/farming-in-the-city/#comments Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:08:03 +0000 Anais Dervaes http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/?p=21562 Our local paper reported that it was colder the first week in July than January. That's crazy! The unseasonably cool weather did not help the tomatoes out - it hurt them.

I was telling a friend of mine "we are going PAY for the cold weather, watch - it will get BLAZING HOT, so enjoy the sweater weather while you can!" Sure nuff. Temps are going to pop back into the upper 90's to 100 this week.

The considerably cool July weather has kept the summer flood of produce at bay - for now. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, peppers are just trickling in but hopefully not for long. I'll trade my sweater for a baskets full of produce!

Yep, I rather be buried in produce than bundled up in a sweater or two I suppose. Well, talk to me when I have my head under the faucet, running water all over my face just to cool off, I may (will) change my tune by then.

We continue to receive positive feedback on our collection of FREEDOM SEEDS

"Crookneck and zucchini squash- Summer 2010. Hands-down, these (http://www.freedomseeds.org/) have been THE best seeds I have ever purchased. And, these are leftovers from LAST year's seeds!" - Homesteader Julia

Come take a walk through our urban homestead garden and check out how our garden is growing!

Lemon cucumber flowers from FreedomSeeds

Swiss chard

Haogen melon: seeds from FreedomSeeds.org

Garden helper: praying manti

Burgess buttercup: seeds from FreedomSeeds.org

Red Flame grapes slowly ripening

Summer colors

Honey Bee hovers over the Russian sage

More heirloom tomatoes

Rouge Vif d'Etampes Pumpkin: seeds from FreedomSeeds.org (sold out)

Provider bean flowers: seeds from FreedomSeeds.org

Thompson grape clusters

Echinacea, goldenrod and marigolds

Tromboncino squash: seeds from FreedomSeeds.org

Ladybug on the flowering fennel

How's your summer garden progressing?

Farming in the city

.... Jules returns to the show and this time I (Steve) have moved beyond making lame excuses as to why I don't have time to grow my own tomato's. The questions I have for Jules this time are more directed to the beginner gardener but I have a feeling any green thumb will enjoy this conversation as well.

Go to Podcast with Two Beers with Steve to listen to interview

The guy love wearing caps -- it's a must in their urban farmer apparel.  Um, that and camos.  Farmer Justin digs camo's and for a down and dirty guy camos make a lot of sense - you can wear dirty clothes and not look dirty (saves on laundry and water). Yep, Farmer J is one practical guy!    Oh, yeah right.  We were talking about caps. Well, you see, Grandpa wore 'em.   Like father, like son, like grandson.

So when we had these caps embroidered with the new logo, folks kept coming up and wanting one for themselves.

Well, now you can order your very own stylish khaki cotton twill cap with hunter green Path to Freedom logo.

They are now in stock,   ( BUY NOW )

Remember I said we don't have cable....

Yeah, well even Fairlght's got her own cap.  Little bit of farm girl meets home girl.

Look at the diva. Actually the diva has a bit of a beauty problem.  Yep, even goats are subject to skin disasters and need some pampering just like humans.

Actually she could use a bball cap these days.

You see, now that it's "spring" she got, um, winter itch.  It's better now (we applied some natural oils to soothe her dry skin)  But in the meantime she has a wee lil bald patch on the top of her head!

If you do meet Fairlight, just forget we ever mentioned it.  This is just between us you know.

She's rather embarrassed over the whole thing.

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 street off Orange Grove Boulevard, about a mile from the Rose Bowl and Old Pasadena, members of the Dervaes family pull about 6,000 pounds of edible flowers, vegetables and fruits from the raised beds and pots on their micro-farm each year.

Jules Dervaes and his children Justin, Anais and Jordanne have been growing their own food on their one-tenth of an acre lot since the 1980s. The family produces 99 percent of its entire diet in the family yard in what Jules calls the “100 foot diet,” since produce and eggs travel 100 feet or less from their source to the Dervaes’ kitchen.

The Dervaes’ urban homestead, Path to Freedom, symbolizes a victory in cutting out food miles from their carbon footprint. What makes this feat all the more remarkable is the family’s ability to use water-conserving techniques to grow their produce.

Food miles are “the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is ultimately purchased or consumed by the end user,” states a paper published for Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

The farther a product travels from its source to a store, the more gasoline, energy and packaging is used to bring that food to the consumer. The longer food takes to get from the farm to the consumer, the more nutrients it loses, since food starts losing its full nutritional value after being picked. For this reason, consumers have been growing their own vegetable gardens and attending local farmers markets in increasing numbers.

“Food miles are important [because of] the carbon footprint that’s hidden in our cheap food. It’s like ‘look at our cheap food’, but someone’s paying somewhere for something because it’s not cheap when you ship. [Food] coming from Chile or New Zealand, that’s a lot of trucking. If you can’t see it [the cost] right off the bat on your bill you’re going to see it in the health care bill for the planet,” said Jules Dervaes.

When the Dervaes’ harvest a surplus of heirloom tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and peas, they sell the surplus to restaurants in Pasadena such as Marstons, Elements Café and a catering business, Kitchen for Exploring Foods. At the most, Dervaes produce travels a mile and a half to get to these restaurants, which also represents minimal food miles.

At zero food miles for the family, Path to Freedom is certainly environmentally friendly, but the Dervaes’ have used other methods and systems to decrease their environmental impact and increase their Earth friendliness.

Animals are a part of closing the sustainability circle at Path to Freedom. A food chart produced by the Dervaes family shows that, in a good year, they consume 60 percent of their harvest, 30 percent is sold to restaurants and 10 percent is fed back to their farm animals. The homestead farm is entirely sustainable, because the family re-uses and composts droppings from their two goats, five ducks and eight chickens, which enriches the soil for next year’s garden. Because the urban farm produces enough food for the family and the animals, the Dervaes’ don’t even need to use their cars or gas to get food from an animal-feed supply store. Everything they need to keep their farm fed and producing happens in their yard.

In an effort to decrease their environmental impact, Jules Dervaes took advantage of Pasadena’s many city rebate programs, upgrading his three major appliances to Energy Star brands, taking advantage of compact fluorescent light bulb giveaways, installing solar panels and planting trees. The solar panels provide two-thirds of the Dervaes’ electricity, and Jules chooses to pay an extra few cents per kilowatt hour to get wind-powered electricity through the city grid at night.

Running a farm in their backyard hasn’t always been easy for the Dervaes family; drought, natural aridity and California’s growing water shortage have posed problems and harvest shortfalls in recent years.

According to the state of California Web site and the state Water Control Board, statistics show California entered a severe drought in fall 2006. Three years later, the state may be gearing up for a fourth year of drought and is planning to reduce urban water usage by 20 percent by 2020.

The Pasadena Department of Water and Power placed a mandatory limit on watering to one day per week this rainy season and, as of April 1, residents can only water three times a week before 9 a.m. or after 6 p.m. — the latest efforts in a years-long water reduction effort.

The city charges households for water usage on a tiered scale: what used to be scaled in three blocks has now expanded to five, with five different costs of water. The more water used, depending on water meter size, the more a resident’s water bill.

The Dervaes’ at one point were in the fifth tier scale, costing them plenty of money and jeopardizing their ability to continue affordably growing their own food. But the city gave the family a chance to explain their unique needs for a lot of water and their conservation methods. The family wrote the city explaining the steps it was implementing to curb water usage and was granted relief, making farming more affordable.

In fact, the Dervaes’ have cut their watering bill to $600 annually, and they did it by reusing water, reducing water use and using old irrigation methods.

Rich soil is the key to having a bountiful garden and getting the most out of scarce water resources, which is why the Dervaes’ have mulched and composted their soil extensively. Over the years they’ve added so much natural fertilizer to their soil that they now have a foot and a half more soil than their next-door neighbors.

“We don’t waste anything and we have five composting areas around here. When you put the good soil [dirt with animal fertilizer] on the plants they immediately have a kind of insurance against water stress and drought because the soil’s good and the plants have good root systems because they go down,” said Dervaes.

To learn more about conserving water, Jules Dervaes and his family turned to the Internet. Researching old methods of irrigation, they found a system used in ancient China, Rome and Egypt and still used around the world to this day. The system is called “ollas,” the Spanish term for bottle or jar.

Ollas irrigation is based on burying unglazed clay jars in planters or garden beds, near produce, and filling the jars up with water. Unglazed clay pottery leeches moisture, making it a poor container for holding water for long periods of time. When the ollas are buried to the throat in soil, the jar loses water, dripping deep in the soil, near the roots of the plants. It acts as a constant drip irrigation system, but because water is below the surface, it’s not lost in the sun’s evaporating rays and the plants get only the water they need.

The family’s “computerized, automatic-timed waterer,” son Justin, also waters the garden beds by hand, using a watering wand and a hose, which means water is used appropriately where it’s most needed. Each type of plant is watered based on its needs and its size. This customized watering is much different than the sprinkler irrigation systems used in large commercial farms, where sprinklers shoot water over acres and water is lost to evaporation and scatter.

The Dervaes’ reuse their water as well. During the summer, family members use an outdoor shower shed and biodegradable soaps, so water is rinsed off into the ground, nourishing fig tree and sugarcane poles; clothing is washed in an Amish-style crank washbasin, water and biodegradable detergents siphoned off to water their avocado tree.

The family uses a sink-toilet combo from Asia; after washing their hands in the sink with clean water, the toilet bowl fills with that slightly used water, making the sink and toilet functional, water-saving and totally sanitary.

According to Jules Dervaes, citrus, once established, historically does well being dry farmed in California. However, dry farming in semi-arid conditions does not allow for lettuces, carrots, peas and other crops.

A testament to the power of a good rainy season, Justin Dervaes last hand-watered the family’s pea crop at 8 inches of height. They are now well over 8 feet tall, all based on the generous and steady rain Southern California received this winter.

For more stories on the Dervaes’ ongoing micro-farming and conservation efforts, visit urbanhomestead.org.

Front porch farm stand

Getting to know your farmer and where your food comes from.

Our urban farming foray's started back in the early 1990's when Farmer D smother the front lawn to grow food. After 15 plus years supplying local restaurants we are now expanding our homegrown produce sales to be csa-like.

These days, folks are dropping by the urban homestead picking up jams, eggs to greens galore.  Not to mention local pick ups of seeds, soil blocks and more from FreedomSeeds.org and PeddlersWagon.com (hint: if you are local click on "local pickup' and save on shipping!)

We like to thank all our regular customers for supporting local foods and farms, not to mention the tremendous amount of positive feedback we get about the fresh "out of this world" veggies.

Would you like to become part of the Weekly Urban Farmstand - go to DervaesGardens.com and sign up to receive weekly email updates on what's growing in the garden.

Fresh from our garden to your table!

Help us Grow

Speaking of support, I'd like to highlight one Freedom Gardeners post on the forum today that really made our day!

Dear Dervaes family, please keep this topic at the forefront. Keep reminding us that we need to donate and support this site, as well as other PTF sites.

I breeze right past that big Donate button many times a day. How could I have missed it? Sometimes we get so busy in the efforts to become self-sufficient that we forget this site costs your family $$$ to keep up. The work you all are doing, and that we here are trying to accomplish as well, is too important to risk the site not being able to move forward.

It's so simple to donate here; I just used Paypal. Too easy! Thank you for your wonderful site. It's my favorite on the entire Web.
Barb

A major tv media outlet is looking to:

" profile someone who is in the LA area (from San Diego to Santa Barbara) that is in process of transforming his/her life as a combined result of the economic conditions and who is taking the Dervaes’ message as the inspiration for that transformation.  The more radical the shift the better.

Eg. The investment banker who is becoming an urban farmer would be an ideal candidate.

Of course I realize that something like that would be a real long shot…but you get the idea.  Someone who is making a gradual shift from one life style to another will work, as long as the long range vision is to end up somewhere very different from where they are today…and the shift is very visibly underway."

Is this you, or know someone who is?

Contact us at info@urbanhomestead.org

The Dervaes Family: Pioneering the Urban Farm
Take a tour of the Dervaes family’s urban homestead in Pasadena, Calif.

In the bustling city of Pasadena, Calif., lives a family of urban-farm pioneers. Jules Dervaes has spent more than 20 years cultivating his 8,700-square-foot urban farm with the help of his three adult children, Anaïs, Justin and Jordanne.

The Dervaes family's example of sustainability stands out in their quiet suburban neighborhood. The front yard is a lush agricultural oasis yielding 6,000 pounds of produce annually, which is sold to local restaurants and farmers’ markets. Their farm livestock (goats, chickens, ducks and rabbits) replace the typical suburban pets and contribute to garden compost. In addition, the Dervaes family has undertaken other sustainable pursuits such as solar-power paneling, homemade biodiesel fuel and water reclamation projects.

In 2001, the Dervaes family launched Path to Freedom to document their urban-homesteading progress and to encourage others to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. So far, their website has attracted urban farmers from more than 120 countries. The shift in perception toward sustainable living and urban farming emboldens Jules Dervaes in his endeavor to reduce his carbon footprint. “This is a sustainable family,” says Jules. “Our plan is to make a sustainable community.”

Check out the VIDEO INTERVIEWS

Would you like to see more videos from our little homestead in the city?  Then let the folks at UF magazine know.  They want to hear your feeback!

--------------2010 URBAN HOMESTEADING CALENDAR!-----------------

Like what you see here, looking for something to inspire you (and others) throughout 2010?

Buy a beautiful calendar of stunning nature and simple living photos--and be encouraged to grow more of your own food! Plus you'll be supporting an important work of educating others how to be more self-sufficient.

The calendar is a wall calendar, and each month has a different picture. Some months have a group of pictures. The pictures are of nature and simple living topics and reflect the seasons of the year to a certain extent.

BUY NOW ($20 plus $4 shipping) and support this site.

oh my, I just opened my calendar which came this afternoon!!!!! I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT!

The size is perfect, its on firm paper, and the pictures are beautiful. Buy this calendar, you won’t be disappointed. My teenagers said February looks delicious. They are all looking up their birthday month and looking at the pictures. Thank you, and I hope they sell, because I want one next year (a 2011 of course.)  - cena