Jules Dervaes came for a
tour of the Willits Mini-Farm and told us about
his urban homestead project in Pasadena. It sounded
so interesting we asked him to write an article
to share with our readers. Their website - http://www.pathtofreedom.com - shows other projects the family is involved in.
I was born in Tampa, Florida,
in 1947. My paternal grandparents immigrated to
Florida from Belgium, in 1902. Horticulture was
a part of the Dervaes heritage. The family had owned
and operated a well-known nursery and landscape
business in Belgium, and my grandfather was a landscape
specialist in Florida. My father was an active gardener;
however, ornamentals and tropical plants were his
specialty-not food production. As a youth I was
college bound, headed like everyone I knew for the
corporate world.
When I was nearly 26 I wanted
to know where our food comes from, and I became
interested in growing food as a way of life. Mother
Earth News helped my interest grow, and this led
me to emigrate in 1973 to New Zealand, where in
an abandoned gold town on the South Island I began
my homesteading journey. I experienced a taste of
freedom during that time until circumstances brought
me and my family back to Florida and thereafter
to Pasadena, California. We thought of Pasadena
as a "stopping-off" point. We intended
on someday moving to the country. We wanted acreage
and lots of it.
For many years I felt something
was missing in my life. I wondered why we couldn't
all become independent as our farmer-forefathers
were before us. The freedom they tasted came from
making a living the old-fashioned way; they had
to earn it from the soil. Before Path to Freedom,
my beliefs brought me in the direction of simple
living and environmental awareness. When water conservation
became an overriding issue in the 1990s as California
was going through a severe drought period, I did
away with my moisture-challenged lawn, replacing
it with wildflowers and drought-tolerant plants
and, eventually, with edible landscaping.
In the fall of 2000 I had an
angry reaction when I heard that US biotech corporations
were bent on introducing GMOs into the food supply.
Not wanting to be GM'ed myself, I knew I had to
protect my family from this mad experiment. I was
being cornered because I had no other convenient
(cheap) way of getting genuine food anymore. Even
though for many years I had been gardening, I hardly
relied on these plantings for our "daily bread."
My family was tied, as we always had been, to the
supermarket. Because of this threat to the very
seeds of life of our home, I turned radical. I aimed
to get as much food for our dinner table as we could
possibly grow ourselves. We decided to make a go
of it on the one-fifth acre (8,700 sq ft) we had.
But there were nagging doubts at every turn: There
is no room here.
With lines drawn in the dirt,
we proceeded to fanatically plant, trying to use
every available space in the four corners of our
small world. And, after the first year in 2001 of
gardening for real, were we ever shocked when the
final tally showed the harvest coming in at over
2,300 pounds. I knew we could do more for we had
only scratched the surface of our anemic, worm-challenged
soil. And, as I began to look around, something
incredible was happening. My small place was growing
larger right before my eyes.
Three of my four adult children
are currently working with me on this project. It's
been difficult for them, especially early on, since
this was a different lifestyle which brought about
some isolation here in the city. A lot of what we
are doing is new, and therefore, it hasn't been
an easy 'row to hoe.' They have had to make some
sacrifices today for what-I hope-they see as a better
future tomorrow.
Of course, it's a jungle out
there, so we also continue to face daily difficulties
which keep us always on our toes. Everything is
so tight that it makes for one heck of a busy, stressful
situation but one that is, nonetheless, truly rewarding-physically,
emotionally and spiritually. Smallness has meant
better manageability, greater concentration of effort,
and more firsthand knowledge. As a special bonus,
our downsized acreage has forced us to innovate
and to keep innovating. And that has made all the
difference in the world. Last year, our harvest
expanded to over 6,000 pounds from 4,800 sq ft!
As I began to see our own path
to freedom take shape, I knew there were others
who felt the same way I had: discontented with their
city way of life. Having once been on a search for
what was missing in my life, I hoped to show an
example of what can be done. First, we put up photos
on the website, along with stats and a monthly diary.
Later some people asked to come over and see our
yard. When a garden class from a local high school
came for a field trip, we began thinking of giving
tours. This year has been extremely busy, especially
since this is the first year we began to host events
at Path to Freedom. Our schedule has been filled
with tours and a variety of workshops and lectures.
We would estimate that a combined total of 500 people
have attended the 19 events we have hosted so far
in 2004. Since we started giving tours 4 years ago,
we estimate that approximately 1000 people have
visited. Our website outreach is worldwide with
an average of 30,000 visitors per month from over
100 countries.
Throughout my adult life, I've
always been conscious about the environment and
what we should do to reduce our impact on the earth.
One of my motivations was the belief that you may
not be able to change the world, but you can at
least change your footprints on this earth.
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