Elements of a modern homestead: worm composter (under fig tree) solar panels (on garage roof) outdoor shower (left) , clothes line (above), sun oven (front left), xtracycle (middle), biodiesel processor (right) reclaimed urbanite, and self watering pots

21st century homesteading is a interesting combination - a mix of old and new in a eclectic, hybridized life.

Doesn’t this scene from The Good Life just about say it all? {note, watch it and ad lib if you like!)  CLASSIC!

Like Tom so perfectly portrayed, it comes down to choices.  They were "pioneers" too in a sense and they also did not know if it would work out.  Both he and his wife had to make a leap of faith  and then stand against the  criticisms of society.  Today, we know it can be done successfully  but it is still requires hard work and dedication and sacrifice like with most of life's decisions. We, through  choice, have chosen a TV (for movies) but no microwave, a washing machine but no dryer. However,  in the back of our minds, we wonder if we have the courage to go cold turkey.  What if we pull the safety net, could we make it?  Since our family's coat of arms bears a goat, I am sure we'd give it our all.

But I often think about what would happen if I had to hand wash all the clothes.  That would take me ALL day.  Of course, then I appreciate what technology we do have and the helping hands of family. But I am curious : how did true homesteaders live without the choices we have today?  It was hard work, day after day after day. In the lifestyle promoted today by society,  it is  a way of life that goes hand in hand with high hopes and great expectations.

But self-sufficiency in the city, although challenging and demanding,  brings security,  along with a whole new world of surprises.  It is,  as we have proven over the years, a viable alternative lifestyle choice.

What choices have you made?

Pssst!  Like to stock up with some modern homesteading helpers that are seen in the photo?   Check out our online store

Early summer garden

It's about time for another round and reader favorite -- "Pictorial Post!"   Bringing to you once again snapshots from the Urban Homestead.  Enjoy!

Late spring greens

Out with the spring crops and in with the summer ones

Beneficial border on the parking strip

Strawberries

Hollyhocks

The countdown to ripe tomatoes begin!

Heirloom roses

Blueberries!

Red poppy

Basketful of berries

Larkspurs

Blackberry

Climbing roses

Peaches

Apricots

Grapes

Fence line of trailing nasturtiums

Garden in the afternoon

Green beans in the garden

Summer starts

Squash climbing its way up

Peppers

Garden projects

'Quackers"

Calendula

Cucumbers

Home brewing biodiesel

Knitty & kitty. Cassidy share the bed with three of my latest knitting projects

Jammin' Strawberry preserves and grapefruit marmalade

Red Roses

Marking out the succession summer plantings

Morning on the front porch farm stand

Goats at play

Jordanne practicing guitar

Jordanne talks to a reporter about city chickens

Visitors enjoy refreshments in the garden

Laundry day

What's going on at your homestead?

After two years of being screened at many film festivals and community viewings throughout the world, we have published (in its entirety) our award winning short film Homegrown Revolution for free viewing on YouTube.

It has been a crazy ride and exciting to have an award winning film and we sincerely thank those of you who supported this film in many ways.  A big THANK YOU goes out from our hearts to those  who supported us, purchased this video, screened it, shared it or simply let the film's message lead you to a new way of looking at your yard. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! We really appreciate it.

Our unlikely little film was a surprise success story.  For those of you who don't know the history, I'll recap briefly.  For those of you already know it, go ahead and skip to the end of this post to watch Homegrown Revolution.

Homegrown Revolution was made in a whirlwind three days after a last-minute invite for Dad to speak at Peter Sellars' UCLA class in 2007.  Jules Dervaes was to be the lead-in and local authority on sustainable food to Michael Pollan's presentation.

By now, we had given so many presentations, the explaining of our project and "Urban Homesteading" was becoming a tad redundant - there are only so many clever ways we could explain what we have been doing the last 16+ years.  Plus, the fact that this was a night class had many of us expecting a room of yawning and under-caffeinated students blinking sleepily at their laptop screens and surfing Facebook, content to get class credit simply for being a body in the seat.  Short of handing Red Bull out to everyone, we seriously thought NO ONE would wake up for this Urban Homesteading and sustainable food presentation.

Looking back at the time, I realize how far the movement has come to the point it is today.   It wasn't long ago at all, but in 2007  the movement was just blooming and I was finding out that most students didn't care or know about Urban Homesteading -- or even anything environmental or sustainable.   There's always the usual small but core group of students who were into changing the world and activism but we knew we had to reach to the others in the class that might not even have a first thought about the food they ate or about gardening.

At the family meeting / lunch following the invite, Dad turned to me (since I have unofficially become the tech geek / "electronic gadget whisperer" of the family ) and inquired about a video slideshow we had put together for a virtual tour of the Urban Homestead called "One Step at a Time."  This video brochure had been published on our website at the time  since it was first uploaded in 2004 (soon to be uploaded to YouTube for kicks).

As I am not a video editor and had no training at all, my foray into  messing about with video clips had been a sink or swim experience.   After mucking about in Adobe Premier, I had managed to put together some footage that resulted in One Step at a Time and that short film seemed pretty cool when it was made; but I was now slightly embarrassed about it and wanted to give Dad something newer and peppier for the students.

Anais and I got to work in those three days before the presentation.   We had multiple tapes of footage of the garden, animals and various projects throughout the yard but very little of ourselves.  So, I spliced those with some of the news media interviews for a  narrative effect.

I really wanted to do little interviews on our  own footage; but given the short amount of time and our aversion to being filmed by one another, it just wasn't happening. (NOTE: Seriously, I did try.  I approached Justin with a camera as he did his biodiesel brewing and asked him in  my best TV reporter voice to explain what was doing.   I received an  "are you kidding me?" stare for my troubles.  Turns out, it's hard for  us to be enthusiastic about giving each other interviews.  Try explaining to someone who already knows what you are doing, what you are doing.  It isn't easy. )

For fun and to appeal to the college kids who were my own age, Anais and I added in some well known musical favorites to create a edgy  mash-up type music video.

Turns out, as R.E.M's moody guitar in "Drive" snapped up the students' attention at  the first minute to the final frame of the fist-in-the-sky rallying  image and the drumming strains of "Revolution Cry", we had gained this class' full focus and subsequent and  enthusiastic ovation and shouts.   Yes, even the too-cool-for-school jocks of UCLA's NCAA basketball team were into it.

Later that week, we decided to publish Homegrown Revolution on YouTube (cut to 10 minutes since YouTube wouldn't allow videos of  longer lengths at that time) and it kind of went viral for a time and gained over 500,000 views.

We started to use Homegrown Revolution for an intro to Jules Dervaes' workshops and presentations and considered it a type of "video brochure" or "infomercial" to Urban  Homesteading.  Fast forward to late 2008 and we received a phone call from the awesome  folks at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival asking if we wanted to  submit our film for consideration.

I seriously had no idea what they were talking about!   Film?  What film? We don't have a film, I thought.

They soon convinced us that they were really asking for Homegrown Revolution which one of their members had seen on YouTube.  This touched off a flurry of more video editing.  Since the original version contained a lot that was not our footage, we began to re-shoot a lot of scenes and I soon had Homegrown Revolution up to over 25 minutes long.  But because Wild & Scenic had accepted Homegrown  Revolution into their program as it appeared on YouTube, we knew we  had to keep it to 10 minutes.

In the end, the final product came out  at 15 minutes after we all refused to cut out anything more.  There was also concern from some of Film Festival folks about remaking  Homegrown Revolution so much that it would no longer feel like the  original version so we felt a little restricted in our creativity.     I did try to obtain the rights to some of the footage / interviews that appeared in the original version but with so little time to  remake the film, it turned out easier to just re-speak most of it  instead of dealing with all the paperwork.    Again, all this had to  be done in a short amount of time - definitely not enough time to be at one's full creativity.

Unfortunately, although most of our words as they appear in the 2009  version of Homegrown Revolution had been spoken to interviewers  previously, it was hard getting family members to say the same lines  with enthusiasm and with the same passion as they had when speaking to  someone "new" and curious to what we were doing.  Looking at the film today,  I can see all the mistakes and where it could all have been better.

But this was a collaborative project done by all of us -- with each family member taking part in the filming, editing and structure of the film.  Neither of us had any previous film editing / filming experience but we hope the passion and enthusiasm show through any technical flaws and other problems.

It's also important to note that the film was made entirely in-house on computers powered by solar/green sources.  All transportation was done in a biodiesel-fueled car and all camera/mic batteries were rechargeable and charged with solar energy.  Waste was kept to a minimum – paper composted or recycled and all publicizing materials printed  on post consumer paper.

We are humbled by the impressive impact Homegrown Revolution had in  the film festivals both nationally and internationally. It  was never created for a film festival circuit but has a true homegrown, homemade story behind its creation. Today,  whenever I am frustrated by learning something new or seeing where I fail in trying to get something perfect, I just need to look at where our little film that could has taken us.

I am compiling a  tally of the festivals and known public screenings to be published at HomegrownRevolution.com but here are the AWARDS and HONORS Homegrown Revolution has gained so far:

WINNER

Best Environment & Ecology Film North America,
Swansea International Film Festival, UNITED KINGDOM

Prize of the Mayor of the Capitol City of Slovakia
Ekotop Film Festival of Sustainable Development, SLOVAKIA

Best Short Documentary
Southern Appalachian International Film Festival, TENNESSEE

El Capitan Film Award
Yosemite International Film Festival, CALIFORNIA

Best Sustainability Film
Green Screen Environmental Film Festival, CALIFORNIA

Robert T. Nanninga Award for Excellence,
Cottonwood Creek Film Festival, CALIFORNIA

-----------------------------

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Westpac Award Best Short Film Runner Up
Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival, NEW ZEALAND

NOMINATED - Best Film, Climate Change & Sustainable Technology
CMS Vatavaran Environmental & Wildlife Film Fest, INDIA

FINALIST
European Spiritual Film Fest, FRANCE

Footage aired on Oprah's 2009 Earth Day show

You can still purchase the DVD here for community screenings or to just own a copy. We're still sending the film out to festivals who request it, so if you know of any film festivals or other opportunities, continue to send them our way. Thanks!

Pssst...!

Sharp eyed or observant readers might notice we now have a new YouTube address:  http://www.youtube.com/urbanhomestead

We'll still have the http://www.youtube.com/dervaes one but we might FINALLY be getting into sharing how-to videos.  We are launching this new channel for video clips showing snippets of life from the Urban Homestead as well as some how-to videos.

So be sure to subscribe to this new channel to get all the latest videos - thanks!

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. -- Doug Larson

Eulogy: In Loving Memory of Our Garden Shoes

Our mantra “make do, use up and wear it out” on the urban homestead is serious business.  Any item we use has to be ratted and tattered before it gets replaced.   This week, some  really old garden shoes finally died in their line of duty having served us well.   The “cheap” garden shoes had a good, long run – over 10 years or more, I can’t remember!   We had put off getting a new pair.

However,  the old garden shoes had split at the soles and finally had to be laid to rest in our trash can with our other rubbish. Since they were vinyl (egad!) I couldn't even put them in the recycle bin for a chance of an afterlife.  Hate throwing away something we have had for a long while, but it’s sure nice to be able to go into the mucky areas of the garden and not get socks wet!

We’ll see how long these babies last… hopefully, another 10 years or more!

Remember that old saying “They don’t make things like they used to"?  With our modern culture whose emphasis is on consumerism, " Planned Obsolescence" is the norm today.

What things do you  “make do, use up and wear out” ?

"Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. Like beams in a house or bones to a body, so is order to all things." -- Southey, Robert

"A place for everything and everything in its place."  As I’ve said many times before, one of the hardest challenges on an urban homestead is storage and organization.    Keeping all the stuff needed on hand to be self reliant without costing a fortune in nifty storage bins can be quite a daunting (sometimes hair- pulling) task.    Keeping things tidy is practically a full time job and we try to “pick up as we go”  But, oftentimes, we get busy with other projects and the next thing we  know, there’s mess here and there.

Lucky for us, friends are always giving us things that are handy for storing stuff.   Like this handy wire shelving that we can use on the back deck to put our harvest and egg baskets.  It's easy to reach for before you head down the stairs to the garden and animal compound.

Folks are always commenting how “neat and tidy” the urban homestead is.    Yeah, well,  blame it on the genes.     Of course, we are very conscious  of our urban environs and neighbors.    Believe me, the upkeep of the urban homestead is a full time job.  Sure, there are places that are quite unsightly and a downright disorganized mess.   But, hey, we we don’t show you that – its always a work in progress.

This morning, as I was writing this entry about "order on the urban homestead", a Facebook friend posted this link about "Order & Routine."

She wrote:

"I was discovering that if we live in a state of continual reaction to our circumstances, we find ourselves submitted to chaos.  All our life becomes urgency and disorder.  We need to step out of that and craft an environment that highlights and embraces the beautiful and the lovely.  This will allow us to respond thoughtfully and appropriately to the needs in our lives."

How appropriate; I couldn't have said it better myself!  I do have a few tips, which I'll share.

Tips

No shoes in the house
Clean up as you go
Have a regular am and pm cleaning/chore routine
Have a place for everything
Be responsible for your space or the mess you make

How are you bringing order and beauty to your environment?

PS If you'd like to get yourself an egg or harvest basket for your homestead, check out our online Urban Homestead Supply store

Welcoming the kids

Kicking off spring with our first school tour of the season.

The tour started off by explaining what an urban homestead is and how it can reduce our dependency on outside sources.

"From the things we have to do before we can learn them; we learn by doing them." -- Aristotle

As we went through our front yard, we explained that not only is the yard our “grocery store" but it is also our "pharmacy”  as we pointed out all the edible plants and herbs.

Upon entering the backyard, the kids began to “oooh and aaah” as a whole new world opened up right before their very eyes.    We asked the students if they knew how many miles their food traveled and gave them tips how to eat more locally.

As we gathered into the main patio and the students took their seats, the fun began!   First,  it’s “Smell 'n Tell”  as we  handed  out fragrant herbs from the garden to test their olfactory senses.

It’s not only about smell but taste, too.  So,  I whipped up some fresh chard wraps stuffed with hummus and tabouli (made with homegrown mints, green onions , parsley and canned tomatoes).   Jordanne pedaled the bike blender to mix up some vanilla yogurt & berry smoothies.   Both were tasty treats for everyone.

Last, but not least,  the "Backyard Barnyard" circus got  paraded out over squeals of delight, as everyone wanted to pet the chickens, ducks and goats.   They were  fascinated how soft the chickens' feathers were and the way the black feathers shone with a tint of green.  The ducks never fail to get laughs as they waddled out. Blackberry, the pygmy goat, as always, was the star of the show and she loved every minute of it.

We wrapped up the educational tour with a Q & A, discussing what small changes they could implement in their daily lives to become a more responsible consumer and caretaker of the planet.

Take a tour along with us...

Pointing out all the edibles in the front yard

Explaining about where our food comes from

Handing out the herbs

Handful of herbs

Smell n tell test

Slurping down pedal powered smoothies

Showing off the fish

and goats

Passing goodies to eat

Rainbow chard

Homemade tabouli

Chard leaf, hummus and tabouli

Makes for a yummy and healthful snack

Eating the chard wraps

After an extremely wet December, January's been relatively dry and mild.  For the most part we've been able to have both doors wide open during the day and even venturing outside bare foot.

Seeing and talking with friends back East, seems there's still a LOT of snow and more to come.  Tis' one extreme to another I suppose.

On Sunday we did a major clean up of the urban homestead.   Still to be done is the animal compound - taking out a foot or two of compacted compost that will be this year's new garden soil.   Jordanne's been putting it off because of an old shoulder injury (she got hit while riding a bike by a SUV - the person driving was in the wrong) that flares up in winter.

Much of the back yard garden is under wraps, "floating row covers" that is.  So there's really no purty pictures to be had - though underneath these white clothes are lush carpets of assorted greens and things.  We've even had to cover the snow peas because there's these little birds that pick at the leaves.  Since pea shoots are  such a hot seller at the Front Porch Farm Stand we've had to protect the young pea shoot leaves from being decimated.

The new duckies are laying so there's egg to finally tally.   A few chickens are laying and the others are getting more "talkative" so I suspect they'll be laying any day now.

Here we are again, a new year and a new tally.   After last years record breaking harvest of over 3  1/2 tons ( 7,000 pounds ) of produce, will be interesting to see what this year will bring.  And as any farmer knows it all depends on the weather and keeping the plants healthy to ward off disease and bag bugs.

January Tally

Produce: 293 lbs

Eggs:  Duck 58 / Chicken 8

Like to know if you, readers, or fellow bloggers are Keep Track of your harvest this year?

The bulk food pantry

Making use of "air space"

Humpf, the title of this post sounds like an 80's band. LOL

We all know that saying, "a place for everything and everything in its place."

Easier said than done for an urban homesteader's way of life.

When you start living a more simple, self sufficient life, how is that you actually accumulate MORE stuff?  It's a true and a simple fact.  Living a simple life is, in fact, not simple.   If you make food and goods from scratch, you need to store all those supplies  somewhere - anywhere!  Come on, folks, we all have to admit it sometime right?  Raise your hands if you got a stash of stuff just piling up with no place to put it.

Storing all the supplies is certainly a challenge on the urban homestead.   We have to use our space wisely; but we still seem to accumulate more stuff than  sometimes we really need.  Urban homesteading is not only about wisely using every available space to grow food and become more self reliant but using space wisely to store all our much need supplies that we need in this journey towards sustainability.

Organizing and maintaining an urban homestead is one of the most daunting challenges   There are  garden, food supplies, seeds, crafts,  etc., etc.

Doesn't always work, but we find having a daily chore schedule helps keep things a bit more tidy.   If you've brought stuff out for soap making or sewing, keep the container nearby so you can put the stuff back from where it came. A "once around the home and grounds" - putting up, sweeping, dusting and tidying.   Because we are  a working farm, within minutes of a clean up, things can go back to being unruly; however, if everyone does his part to clean up his surroundings,  it does help.   Each member of the household here is responsible for his area of expertise.  We try to follow the golden rule and be good neighbors and citizens of this Rose City so we are very conscious of keeping our homestead tidy and clean.

What creative organizing solutions have you come up with to store all your urban homesteading supplies?

One example is where Jordanne created an otherwise unused space for storing books, yarns and other crafty items in our bedroom.

Care to share?

Looking back on our goals from last year Justin (Jethro) got his fish project underway,  the grey water project too.

Jordanne (Ellie Mae) revamped our two social networks, Freedom Gardens and launched Backyards & Barnyards and did get around to organizing a lot of mess.  Not to forget the launced her super amazing Natural Poultry Supplement Mix which is receiving rave reviews!

As for me (Granny),  the mountain of fabric and yarn still looms like a huge shadow but the craft-music room is coming along nicely.  Not sure if I am talking less and listening more – guess I’ll have to ask my family & friends that.

The 7K bonanza harvest wasn't the only highlight from 2010

We went back to Wild & Scenic located in the quaint mountain town of Nevada City and had a chance to meet our favorite author, John Robbins.  Had a workshop at the Eco Farm conference in lovely grounds Asilomar (didn't get to spend as much time on the beach as we'd like since it was soooo cold and rainy!).   Not to mention numerous articles and video pieces which all were featured here on the blog – our favorite being the recent So Cal Connect piece , I am Los Angeles , Private Chefs of Beverly Hills,  Sis and I were "Cover Girls" & with an article featured in this online magazine and I wrote about my home school experience for another

Our home made film "Homegrown Revolution" won  many awards including : Best Environment & Ecology Film North America - Swansea International Film Festival, U.K.; Prize of the Mayor of the Capitol City of Slovakia - Ekotop Film Festival of Sustainable Development, Slovakia; Best Short Documentary - Southern Appalachian International Film Festival, Tennessee; Honorable Mention: Westpac Award Best Short Film - Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival, New Zealand.  (You can purchase a DVD copy)

We traveled to back to the homestead in New Zealand where I was born (more pics and tales to come) and with our biggest turn out ever to a presentation on urban homesteading!

After the New Zealand trip: Other outreach opportunities included four university appearances by "Farmer D" and a presentation for a public school district's student gardens fundraiser.

On the urban  homestead

Keeping it real.  As with any journey, we had our ups and downs.

Passing of dear old Clementine (the poster chicken & darling of the UH movement) and our duck Amy after freak accident which never fully recovered from.

The cycle of life continued, Though there were sad deaths there was new life with four additions to our flock.  Our southern belles  - Annalee, Lulu Belle, Beulah and Opal.

Pushing the envelope in urban sustainability we added new projects:  hops for beer and 50 tilapia for aquaponics fish farming and wrote about the challenges that we face of growing food in the city.

Wrote about necessary Urban Homestead apparel and "Natural Beauty, "  "Homesteader Hygiene", & Living Without AC,  Washing Clothes by Hand & threw an amazing  "Girlie" Tea Party under $50!

Long time customer, Elements, who featured our many of our homegrown items on his menu unceremoniously dumped us (having money issues)   When one door closed, it opened up our produce to the public with the launch of the Front Porch Farm Stand featuring local foods and goods.

Weather continued to be a problem with a record heat wave in October & record rainfall in December

Though we had one of our best honey harvest in years, Varroa Mites (and early cold weather) wiped out all of our of beehives except one.

I dropped the ball on the Weekly Meal wrap ups (sorry readers) posts but I picked up guitar which I am enjoying relearning – well, except for the sore finger tips.   Ouch!

There you have it!  Some of the highlights of 2010,  I know I just touched the tip of the ice berg otherwise I’d be here all day.

So what our plans/goals for 2011?   That’s certainly a good question and a lot to digest ….  we do know are going to have sadly terminate some projects because of the lack of support.   It’s a bitter pill to swallow put sometimes you got to cut things that are weighing you down.  I’m talking to myself here… have to keep saying that!

Also like to thank all of you readers who have supported us via donations or purchases from our online store.    Not to mention all the wonderful letters, cards and emails.   THANK YOU!

While I try to shake off a awful case writers block, if you are new or a lurker to this blog, this is a good time to swap howdies or better yet TELL US what your FAVORITE post(s) of 2010 were!

So pull up a chair and give us a holler ya hear and hope 2011 is off to a good start for you!

Fresh vegetables, herbs, honey and new eggs every day; Jules and his family are living the farm life. It’s also a most unconventional lifestyle given that their home is in the middle of Pasadena, California. The family struggles to be as self-sustainable as they possibly can—their car drives on biogas[biodiesel], solar panels power their television, and each day they have fresh food from their own meticulously well-maintained crops.

Jules first began his farming life before moving to Pasadena, when he lived for several years in New Zealand. Jules embarked on his current lifestyle after becoming concerned about how the food industry controlled what he and his family ate. Jules wanted to be more in control and minimize his family’s impact on the environment.

Living this lifestyle doesn’t mean that you have to be old fashioned. After a day working on his urban-farm lot, Jules and the rest of the family sit down to watch movies on Netflix or work on one of their many websites. The Dervaes family websites center around the idea of living a greener life, and are some of the biggest websites/communities about urban farming. It’s a growing movement; and a green revolution!

Created by Nicholas Reid & Joris Debeij IamLosAngeles.com

Jules Dervaes - I Am Los Angeles from Joris Debeij on Vimeo.

{Sweet -- or bittersweet -- to see our chicken matriarch, Clementine in her last of many media appearances before passing away.}