Putting the 'Home' Into Urban Homesteading
Old homestead photo courtesy of Cen Penn U
Q & A with Jules Dervaes, Urban Homesteader Pasadena Ca
1. Where do you think the immediate opportunities lie for making progress in localizing the US food system?
For over 20 years, I’ve been gardening in the city; but, since 1999 I’ve been growing food “for real” in my own backyard. The most immediate opportunities for making progress always lie right in one’s immediate sphere of personal action—as close as outside one’s door. It’s a return to a lifestyle that existed in the past where things were small and slow and sensible. Progress starts with envisioning a new (yet old) lifestyle with the home as central to all aspects of life—work and leisure, food and energy. So, real progress means bringing the economy, beginning with the food economy, home again.
2. What do you see as the biggest challenges today?
One of the biggest challenges in this or any age is to stick with the necessary changes we need to make and hold fast to the end. As important as beginnings are, the real test is in reaching the finish line, which requires perseverance for the long haul. Because we tend to turn things over to others—experts—we lose the opportunity to develop true self-sufficiency. Through growing our food, along with other homesteading practices, we gain invaluable experience and the true rewards of doing-it-yourself. Going forward, we have to be willing to get past the idea stage and individually sweat the details, adjusting to unforeseen difficulties, and, above all, never quitting.
3. What’s the most rewarding part of the work that you do?
Attending Nature’s classroom almost every day and passing the prerequisite lessons, I am rewarded directly by the food brought to my family’s table. Because of where and how the produce is grown (in the backyard, organically), I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is good for us and for the planet, as well. Another reward comes from sharing this path to food security with others by spreading the harvest news via my family’s websites.
4. Anything else that you’d like to add?
Although green is popular today, it is easy, in our euphoria, to believe that things are getting better. But, with popularity comes superficiality. Therefore, it is necessary to get past the first flush of trendiness and search out deeper green steps. This will require the discernment of seeing beyond easy, quick, hip actions and the courage to work toward serious, long-term solutions. The real change the world needs can only come about through personal sacrifice.
Homebased, Homegrown, Homemaking
There’s a lot of stuff (books, articles, sites) now these days on urban homesteading – growing food, solar cooking, raising chickens, canning, etc.
Not only does urban homesteading involve all those self reliant aspects but one can over look the root word. “Home.”
Too often we are so busy going hither and tither but never really looking at the world closer to home. Do you know that the backyard is one of the most underutilized spaces in America and we all know that the front yard lawn is just plain wasteful. Not to mention the hours we spend stuck on freeways – what’s the point to this madness?
What Would the Ingalls Do?
Our pioneer peers understood about home. Heck, at times they were stuck days on end at home either because of weather (like in the Long Winter) or because they were miles from their nearest neighbors. How is that they were content with place and people?
We often wonder could our little urban homestead stand on its own. It’s not that we want to be isolated; this journey is all about community but sometimes community can be a crutch. Can we as individuals stand on our own two feet if we have to?
How are you/your family pioneering a path backwards to a simpler, back to basics life?
What practical “Ingallisms” do you practice or live by in this modern age? If you post your online conversation about this topic, don’t forget to link to your post via the comment box below.
What are you doing to turning your home into a home-stead?
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We have been working on it for 3 years. First we put up solar panels. Then we started to expand our food growing by making raised beds over some of our concrete paths. After that we converted the rose garden to veg & berry growing. We added grape vines, a couple of mini-dwarf apple trees & a cherry. Then we got a clothes line for outside and in the garage for bad weather. The chickens came next and a SunOven. Chickens are fun and the eggs are the best. It's been great fun learning to cook & bake bread with solar energy. Then we took out the landscaping in the front yard and put in Blueberries, strawberries & Herbs. Just recently we finally got some compost areas built with concrete blocks.... My Grandfather was a farmer. It feels right. I love watching seeds sprout up and getting my hands in the soil. We thought we would never be able to live our dreams because we couldn't afford acreage here in Calif., but you and your family showed us how. We call our urban homestead "Dreams Come True".
We are currently exploring ways to create our little Garden of Eden in the suburbs of the desert. Thanks to inspiration from all the people who are living their urban homesteading dreams right now, we are taking proactive measures today to reach our goals of self efficiency and optimum health instead of waiting for that ideal place in the future that may or may not happen. I would like to have our home be the healthiest environment for my family to thrive in and a sanctuary from the stress and shallowness of our modern world. So on a cookie cutter suburban block in the hot desert, that means lots of experimentation.
Here are our unique challenges: heat, high water bills, dry dusty soil and more heat. Here are our unique opportunities: we can plant all year round; we are not near any major industrial or urban areas so no pollution; and I have a head start with hands on experience with desert gardening, vermiculture, and some hydroponics.
Some of my successes are:
~a nice big worm bin where my healthy earthworms create "black gold" soil from anything I put in there. Plants love this vermicompost more than organic fish fertilizer or anything else I have ever used to fertilizer.
~Lasagna gardening. I have really dry soil with patches of nature's concrete called "caliche." I have been composting directly into my soil for 11 years now and this has made the natural desert soil much more pliable and easy to dig into. I discovered that it isnt enough for optimum plant growth though, so I started layering peat moss, compost, mulch, horse manure and cardboard and letting it settle in with frequent waterings. Of course, I also add earthworms and vermicompost as well. The plants I have planted in the lasagna bed have done extremely well compared to the same varieties I planted in the normal areas where I have simply been composting into the ground. The soil retains moisture extremely well and is loaded with great nutrients being turned into even better powerhouse black gold soil by the earthworms.
~"Japanese Tomato Ring." This is basically an above ground compost bin that you plant tomatoes around and water from within the compost pile so that the compost tea leaches out to the roots of the tomato plants. I have never had such huge tomato plants! Very happy and healthy.
~Planting within my tree wells. Saves water and you get more food production for the same amount of space. I plant onions and garlic along the edge of my citrus trees in the winter and melon vines to keep the ground moist during the long summer.
~Preserving food. A friend who is much farther down the homesteading path than myself sold me a pressure canner and taught me how to use it. Now I have the ability to can meat and all kinds of vegetables and fruits, not just jams and tomatoes. Its one of the very best ways to preserve food. I have also started drying my herbs and veggies (after all it IS the desert) with a drying rack I bought at a local Asian grocery store. My last preferred method for preserving is freezing because the quality of the food doesn't last as long as the other 2 methods plus it takes electricity to run a freezer. But I still freeze foods. I had a huge supply of honeydew melons and we couldn't keep up so I chunked them up and froze them individually on a cookie sheet, then bagged them up. Now I can take out as much or as little as I need for smoothies.
Some of the things that I havent done very well with and/or are still on my To Do List are mostly things that require money and so I've had to wait a little longer because I'm still figuring out how to make them happen These things are: gutters and cisterns for water harvesting; retaining walls for slopes in our yard to create more areas for planting; and more permanent borders for areas I already have planted. Learning how to lay brick will be the solution to some of that (: Another step I need to take is finding out what kind of farm animals we are allowed to have because it would be really great to have fresh eggs, milk and manure. Another challenge I am figuring out is how to deal with the occasional hard freeze that we get every few years. All my young citrus trees froze back at the beginning of 2011 and even though they all leafed back out in the spring, I didnt get one single fruit this past year. So I am using Christmas lights to keep them from getting damaged this winter.
Overall, things are definitely on the right track and I love that I can share my home grown produce and earthworms with friends and family. The most exciting thing is creating a spark in others when it comes to all the possibilities of being more healthy and living more closely with the earth.
Thats it in a nutshell. I hope I have helped anyone looking to be more self sufficient in the desert and that you enjoy the journey as much as I do! Here is my facebook page where I am starting to document this journey of "Creating a Home" for myself and my family.
Really enjoyed this. Looking forward to the trip guys! Glad I got on early/