Sunday, May 29, 2016

How to Grow 6,000 Pounds of Food a Year in Your Backyard

Follow this family's ideas and you too could grow your own food, right in your back yard. At least until some city official decides that your family homestead farm operation is breaking some sort of zoning restriction, and makes you move.

A better alternative, if you can swing it, would be to move to another country where it is less likely that the city or anyone else for that matter is going to bother you.




There is a house in Pasadena, California that’s known as the Urban Homestead. From the street, you might be confused as to why it’s earned such a name or why it’s special among the other homes in the suburb just outside Los Angeles.

But when you take a peek around the back of the home, what you see is a yard in which every inch is filled with fruits, veggies and even a stray chicken or two.


The property, which is less than a tenth of an acre, is owned by the Dervaes family of four. Patriarch Jules developed the backyard farm in 1985 as part of an effort to reclaim ownership of his food.

Since then, Jules and his three children developed the project, and now take care of hundreds of plants, all of which are grown without chemicals or fertilizers.

Image: The Urban Homestead
Image: The Urban Homestead

“It’s a challenge to grow things organically,” Jules told mindbodygreen in an interview. “Sometimes we just have to let nature be, and if the crops are too infested, we’ll just pull out the crop and plant another batch.”

The Dervaes family are vegetarians and get most of their food from their yard. Many residents from L.A. even pop by weekly to buy a box of Urban Homestead produce.

The family also provides workshops and other opportunities to get involved with the project. By doing this, they hope to prove that connecting to nature and growing your own produce isn’t impossible. It doesn’t even have to be hard!

“Whether you live in an apartment, suburb or on 10 acres, our mission is to connect with folks who yearn to take back their food and live a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle,” said Jules. “We can all take small steps that collectively have a big impact.”

And it’s true. You don't need a large plot of land to grow your own food.

If you are passionate about living a clean organic lifestyle, and have decided that it is unlikely to be sustainable in a country where restrictions on urban farming and water catchment are becoming tighter by the day, perhaps a trip to Finca Cazador would be in order.

Here you live on your own land, cultivate your own food in your own garden and live in a secure community of like minded friends for protection.

This story was originally found here

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