Urban Farms | SoCal Connected | KCET

Drivers speeding down Highway 210 through Pasadena have no idea that just a stone's throw from the fast lane is a lush but tiny Eden, a 4,000-square-foot farm that not only feeds a family, but revolutionizes the economy. idea of ​​what you can do in a very unlikely place in the middle of a city this is city life but I bought the countryside for the city aha instead of having to go to the countryside. I just imported it. Jules Duvets, 63, started this backyard farm ten years ago, it's a deliberate decision. A throwback to the history days of self-sufficient rural America.

Jules and his children grow almost all the food they need and they all throw in five pounds of grapefruit. His daughters are kind. We have another guy coming to pick up Andrew Dan. Yes, are you done yet? son Justin, their products are organic and their animals are much friendlier than average to say hello, hello, we have a chicken, straw ducks and to do this the ducks and chickens lay thousands of eggs a year and keep the bugs down control, they really made the dynamics of The Elvin farm is much more sustainable, sustainable and dense in its 4000 square feet, they grew 400 varieties of vegetables, fruits and edible flowers, 6,000 pounds a year, enough to feed themselves with abundant leftovers and with the current passion in high-end restaurants for local pesticide-free products. chefs are literally forcing their way to your door, it's not cool, what are you doing?

Oh wonderful land, she is, so what are you going to do? the sorrel hmm, I'll use it to make a really nice sounding relish with cucumber for our salmon dish the family makes. about $20,000 a year from their front porch sales they use to buy the crops they can't grow like wheat and rice notes I would say at first I didn't really believe they could do it. I had some doubts because I come to maintain Again, this place is too small, there is no way we can feed ourselves. Also, I never thought we could grow vegetables for the market, so how did this independent living experiment start?

It all started 10 years ago. When Jules bought some taco shells for dinner, he found out too late that they were being recalled because they were mistakenly made with genetically modified corn. When I thought about giving this food to my children, they smile tonight and they depended on me to give it to them. good things, I mean, they will take what their parents would take, any child would take what their parents give them, they will say this is coming from my mom or my dad and I couldn't afford to be in that position of giving them bad things afterwards. of a decade.

Later, this radical food enthusiast managed to go off the grid. He calls his lifestyle the path to freedom and what the family thinks of that whole approach. They thought it was strange. They thought it was. They thought it was. My daughter wouldn't leave the network. front yard and visit their friends because they said what's up with your dad they wanted to know right because I was making some radical changes here there Gervaise doesn't have ugly commutes they avoid office politics and we'll never get fired but their jobs are much more than nine to five. I need to help with all the help I can get and it's my family that like in the old days the farming family made the difference there are no microwave ovens in this kitchen and no Cuisinarts we don't have gadgets either but they are just manual power The little electricity they use is generated by these solar panels.

How much is your electricity bill? Well, it costs about twelve dollars a month, 12 dollars a month for everything here, yes, they spend. even less with gasoline, this is their biodiesel brewing station, so this is just new grease from restaurants, yes they use it to defile rings, fries, there anything you can fry and you get it for free, yes, free and it is delivered to the door of our house, the gas station is self-service. It hasn't always been easy Justin remembers the year frost wiped out a crop, another year it was a destructive insect, and recently they noticed a new challenge: climate change.

We call it the vanguard of global weirdness because we've been gardening for As long as you can feel things are bad, we have this June bug that comes out, it's called June, so it's supposed to come out in June, but it comes out in July, in August, and you know, in September, something is definitely off. The other challenge is the water, the skies of Southern California. don't give enough for Jules to keep the water bill down with this ancient form of irrigation which is clay pot irrigation but the bears down there usually bury it up to their throats and then all you have to do is fill it up and the water cries through the portal and through the clay and you get the water where the plant indicated in the root zone, the plants take the water as needed, it's that simple, it's 5:00 o'clock, the moment when everything is worth it.

Be knowledgeable Elsa, derv A are the best locavores, their food traveled thirty meters from the field to the table. They all say they love

urban

farming and can't imagine living a typical consumption-driven life at the end of the day, some don't. So visits to their back-to-nature activity websites have increased dramatically. They receive around six million visits a month from other people interested in this "grow it yourself" revolution. We are all in the same boat on the same planet and now there are people asking deep questions. about the future of the planet and they are willing to do this they are willing to take a risk it is a risk that has paid off for Jewel's and is paving a way for others I am Val Zavala for SoCal Connected