PATH TO FREEDOM
PEDDLER'S WAGON
FREEDOM GARDENS
"LITTLE HOMESTEAD"
DERVAES GARDENS
URBAN HOMESTEADING
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November 20, 2008
We received word from producer/director Robert McFalls that he will be holding private screening of the much anticipated documentary, HomeGrown, at a private residence here in Los Angeles on the evening of December 6th.
This is an opportunity for our friends and supporters to meet the producer and subjects of the film.
We know many of you have inquired about where and when you will get a chance to see this film. So far, there’s no word yet on an public LA film premier (the producer says “he’s working on it”) or when it will come out on DVD. If you would like to send your inquires to the producer himself, feel free to do so. We feel that he needs to hear from the public (not just us).
OK, now back to the this Dec 6th private in-home screening….
PTF is offering you a chance to see this film along with us!
Film Screening Details
When: Saturday Dec 6 (6:30 PM)
Where: a private home in Eagle Rock, CA with the producer/director Robert Mcfalls and PTF (winners will be given the exact home address)
This exclusive opportunity gives us a chance to do some fund raising on our part so that we can continue our presence here on the Internet and grow our community outreach. With many new projects in the works, like Freedom Gardens, our goal of raising $10,000 this year has fallen considerably short (so far we’ve raised about $3,000). So here’s an opportunity to help us help you grow the future(tm).
How to get your tickets
There are only FIVE “tickets” available, and to win you can either:
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1. ENTER a fundraising raffle ($5.00 a ticket via Pay Pal) The more you buy, the more likely your chance to win! Drawing ends Dec 1st. Note: Offering three tickets; minimum of 10 entries per ticket awarded.
2. PLACE a bid bid on Ebay for one ticket ends on Nov 26th
(Last ticket will go up on Ebay next week after bidding ends on Nov 26th)
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Your payment can be considered a tax deductible donation - so there’s nothing to lose!
If you win
You’ll have a chance to be the first here to see HomeGrown, meet the producer/director and PTF. Better yet, you’ll be supporting our non profit homegrown efforts in urban sustainability and community building.
Good luck!
Lastest Reviews for HomeGrown
Homegrown: A Homestead Family in Modern Day Pasadena (CIVIL EATS)
The Dervaes family seem like they’ve come from another time. Only instead of on the prairie, they’ve settled within the city limits of Pasadena, where Jules Dervaes and his children Justin, Anais and Jordanne grow over 6,000 pounds of food, power their computers with solar panels and make their own biofuel on a fifth of an acre in the front and back of their house. They are the focus of a new film by Robert McFalls called Homegrown, which tells the story of eco-pioneering, showing viewers a picture of what our not-so-distant future could look like if we were to live up to our eco-ideals.
The story is a simple one: Jules Dervaes dreamt of cultivating the land, but found himself living in the city without the means to resettle somewhere with acreage. One day, after years of thinking about leaving, he decided instead to do away with his lawn, which he considered too much upkeep for very little return. So the family began to grow edible flowers, later moving onto food and animals (they have chicken, geese and goats). Once they got on this track to self-sufficiency, it was easy to jump to changes in the way energy was being used on their homestead.
Though the film paints a captivating portrait, the poignancy of Homegrown doesn’t rest on this particular family’s ambitions as much as it delivers a new vision of the future food system. What the Dervaes are doing, in some ways, is not new. At one point in recent human history (in my case, my grandparents all grew up on farms) we knew our way around a garden patch. Instead, this film shows that after the industrial revolution has come and gone, and the infrastructure that made us great is already in place, our cities having sprawled, how will we reclaim land and provide for ourselves in a world without easy oil? We will, by necessity, have to get smart about our consumption. We will have to make better use of urban space for garden plots. The Dervaes are so admirable precisely because their effort shows that growing enough to feed a family and more is possible with less land than we’d assumed. In other words, they make a great model.
This is the first film by director Robert McFalls, who spoke at the screening at Green Screens, a regular environmental films showcase at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. He said he was looking for a story about family and persistence. As a food policy wonk, I could have used more specifics on the food, the planting and planning. But then, after saying that to myself at the end of the film, I realized that the Dervaes have a helpful website that could fill in those blanks for me.
Living in the city is at once the most and least ecological choice; you must endure the pollution, crowded conditions and lack of land but you don’t need a car to go to the farmer’s market, and are in contact with like-minded people with whom you can set-up a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. Many, including Michael Pollan and Vandana Shiva, are now speaking out on the three-fold energy, food and global warming crisis, saying that these three issues are so intimately connected that they must be dealt with together, and right now. In their way, the Dervaes are doing exactly that. Their genius in growing food in the city is the ability to sell it to local restaurants, creating a relationship between a chef who must have food to serve in order to stay open, and an urban farmer who brings produce by bike or biodiesel car.
But their life is by no means easy. They don’t take vacations, or buy many foods they don’t grow themselves. They often eat the same things again and again. And I could not help but wonder why the grown-up Dervaes children don’t have significant others, and whether or not they will ever move out of their father’s home. Maybe the Dervaes are re-thinking community too, while they are at it. Should we stay close to our families, and create support networks, maybe we would be better adjusted and happier than our doppelganger typing away in a skyscraper cubicle. But it brings into question the notion that President-elect Obama has brought up in his speeches: will we be willing to sacrifice in order to better the planet for all of its inhabitants? Or will we keep going at the rate we are now and see what happens?
Perhaps what we are seeing in Homegrown is a future food system in the making, where, instead of sprawling fields, everyone has a little bit of earth planted.
(2 votes)
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Filed under: Mixed Greens (News), PTF Spotlights, Posts by Anais |
Tags: community, documentary, homegrow, homegrown, outreach, robert mcfalls, support
Keep This Site Growing: Did you get some inspiration or glean an informative tip from this post? Please support this site by either making a tax deductible donation or a purchase from our online store. Thank you!
November 19, 2008
Thanks to Stephany’s comment, I see the LHITC 11/7 journal post started a little ripple out there in the blogsphere encouraging other to open their cupboards, pantries, fridge, freezers and “say ahhhhh.”
Showing off their insides
11/19 Stephany
11/13 Meadowlark
11/13 Matriarchy
11/13 Fullfreezer
11/12 Critter Farm
11/07 LHITC kicking it off
Did I miss anyone else? What a fun way to peek into the inner sanctom of folks every day lives.
Here at the urban homestead we constantly strive for our “insides” to reflect our outsides — how about you?
SAY AH CHALLENGE
It’s been awhile since we lauched a blogshpere challenge. Thanks for the prompting, Stephany here we go….
So, what do you say? I guess this “Say Ah Challenge” calls for an image and we’ll let our goat, Lady Fairlight, do the honors.
Have you spent the summer harvesting and preserving your gardens bounty are you stocking up for the winter? Perhaps you even signed up for our Harvest Keeper Challenge …. this lastest challenge will show us how well you did!
Are you brave enough to “say ah” and “show us your insides?”
Sign up in the comments box below or post your blog url where you bare all.
Here’s our “insides” once again to kick things off.
(5 votes)
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Filed under: Back to Basics, Challenges, Homestead Life, In the Kitchen, Posts by Anais |
Tags: challenge, Harvest Keeper, storing, Urban Homestead
Keep This Site Growing: Did you get some inspiration or glean an informative tip from this post? Please support this site by either making a tax deductible donation or a purchase from our online store. Thank you!
November 18, 2008
Our sister, network site, Freedom Gardens has surpassed 1,550 members and growing daily.
The revamped site has new, improved features like a forum, journal, find fellow FGers in your area and much. much more.
There are still more improvements which we are working on as we speak, but it’s getting there!
We are really excited over the community building that’s going on over at Freedom Gardens and hope that you are too.
Spread the word about this free online social network. A new gardening movement is growing - don’t be left behind.
Let’s grow forward for food security and freedom!
:: Field Hand Appreciation :: GM $20 Thank you, thank you for your continued and unwaivering support. Your donations help go toward growing the future.
Have you considered support our organizations homegrown efforts? It’s easy and tax deductible!
(4 votes)
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Filed under: Posts by Anais, Website Updates |
Tags: freedom garden, freedom gardens, Garden
Keep This Site Growing: Did you get some inspiration or glean an informative tip from this post? Please support this site by either making a tax deductible donation or a purchase from our online store. Thank you!
November 17, 2008
Thanks to a local Freedom Gardener, who brought us a lovely jar of plum preserves and a bag of acorn flour!
I fiddled around with acorn flour when I was a teenager and would really like to get back into it. As teenagers we were big on wilderness and survivalist skills - building hogans, forging, wild edibles, etc, etc. Now such skills are needed more than ever and we like to incorporate even more wild and local edibles into our diets. We do harvest some wild edibles already but we like to strive incorporate wild foods because So Cal if full biodiversity.
On Friday I whipped up a batch of biscuits which were absolutely scrumptious. Everyone concurred that they were the best tasting biscuits -ever! Very nutty and earthy tasting.
I can wait to experiment more with using acorn flour in baked goods. SM say in her latest post that it takes A LOT of acorns 10 lbs for 1 lbs of “flour” That’s a lot of acorns…. time to get a’harvesting!
Thanks to sites like Freedom Gardens it’s great to be able to hook up with someone who has the same interests and starting building a community - sharing and growing! Thank you again SM!
Not sure is she’s coming to this Sunday’s event (Film Screening & Harvest Potluck) but this local FGer is looking to trade acorns for acorn flour.
Oh, and if you haven’t joined the Freedom Garden community, what are you waiting for. FG now has over 1500 members strong. Perhaps you’ll find a FGer in your area!
:: Helpful Resources ::
Harvesting the wild acorns (Backwoods Home)
Use of Acorns for Food in California: Past, Present, Future (PDF)
(4 votes)
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Filed under: In the Kitchen, Posts by Anais, Unusual Edibles |
Tags: diet, diversity, freedom garden, Garden
Keep This Site Growing: Did you get some inspiration or glean an informative tip from this post? Please support this site by either making a tax deductible donation or a purchase from our online store. Thank you!
November 17, 2008
whoops sorry for the blurry picture, musta been in a hurry
Summer still lingers on here at the urban homestead with peppers, beans and tomatoes still growing on.
The wondrous salad greens are back on the menu and we can’t eat enough of the delectable greens. Give me a bowl of salad and some homemade bread and I would be satisfied. Hmmm, doesn’t take much to please me. Ah, the simple things in life. No store bought flowers, diamonds, new shoes - just a bowl of homegrown salad greens please.
One of our clients who, like us, was without salad for a weeks and weeks while we battled harlequin bugs and the roller coaster weather called me this morning and said that she and her husband “almost cried” with joy when the sat down and ate our mixed salad greens over the weekend. I don’t know what it is about our greens but they are something. Can really put a finger on it. Could it be the EM, rock dust, or just 20 years of growing soil that reflects in the taste of our greens?
I didn’t do much in the way of meal photos this week, sorry! But you still can get an idea that our garden’s still supplying us with homegrown bounty.
On Friday I made some biscuits with some acorn flour a local Freedom Gardener gave us. They were absolutely THE BEST biscuits (more on the acorn flour late)
SATURDAY
Breakfast - homemade pomegranate pancakes (made with HG eggs) and homegrown honey
Dinner - homemade tortillas with homemade spanish rice ( HG peppers, tomatoes) topped with HG sauteed peppers, tomatoes, cilantro and organic cheese
SUNDAY
Breakfast - organic oatmeal and homegrown preserves
Lunch - leftovers from Saturday’s dinner
Dinner - leftovers from Saturday’s dinner
MONDAY
Breakfast - organic oatmeal and homegrown preserves
Lunch - HG green beans and HG salad greens
Dinner - HG tomato sandwich with HG salad greens
TUESDAY
Breakfast - organic oatmeal and homegrown preserves
Dinner - HG pumpkin soup with homemade organic corn bread
Lunch - same as lunch
WEDNESDAY
Breakfast - homemade biscuits with HG, homemade preserves
Lunch - homemade veg patty (HG squash, peppers) with HG beans
Dinner - leftover veg patty sandwich with HG salad greens
THURSDAY
Breakfast - organic oatmeal and homegrown preserves
Lunch - HG steamed zucchini and HG summer veggie pasta
Dinner -homemade pizza topped with HG peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and cheese with HG salad greens
FRIDAY
Breakfast - organic oatmeal and homegrown preserves
Lunch - HG salad greens and HG lima beans
Dinner - HG salad greens, homemade biscuits made with local acorn flour (YUM!), homemade tomato sauce (HG tomatoes, peppers, green onions, herbs) with organic whole wheat pasta topped with organic Parmesan cheese
(4 votes)
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Filed under: 100 Foot Diet, Homegrown Diet, Posts by Anais |
Tags: bread, homemade, Menu, summer, Urban Homestead, weekly meal wrap up
Keep This Site Growing: Did you get some inspiration or glean an informative tip from this post? Please support this site by either making a tax deductible donation or a purchase from our online store. Thank you!