An Amazing and Prolific Urban Homestead

Image Gallery With perseverance and ingenuity, Jules Dervaes has created a homestead oasis in the middle of urban Pasadena, Calif. PATHTOFREEDOM.COM

Looking back at 1965, the year I entered college, I hardly recognize myself! At 18 I was headed — like everyone I knew — for life in the professional world. My dad was providing for our family by working for Chevron as a district manager of central Florida. For me, class valedictorian at Tampa’s Jesuit High School, the die had been cast to make my living by wearing a white collar. Working at manual labor was never a possibility, never even imagined.

Getting married in 1970 brought new responsibilities and a sense of urgency regarding the need to consider the long-term future — for years I felt inadequate in handling all of life’s daily requirements, let alone emergencies. I admired people who were able to build or fix things and longed to be as rugged as those who started from scratch by settling new lands.

Intoxicated with the changes of the ’60s and ’70s, some of my generation found peace in the back-to-the-land movement. Others went further, making an exodus from the nation. The convergence of these happenings signaled that it was time; I knew I had to go away. I wanted to live as simply as possible, in harmony with nature, in touch with my basic needs for food, water and shelter. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, I was looking for “old world” stability and a place where family values were still unchanged.

It was 1973 when my wife and I immigrated to a land less traveled. New Zealand was to become for me a new birthplace. I arrived there ready to begin living off the land, taking with me a briefcase packed with the first 13 issues of Mother Earth News magazine.

The isolated ruggedness of an abandoned gold town (population one, the addition of my wife and me tripling it to three) became the setting of a daily struggle to learn to live a new way. Embarrassed, I felt like a child, having to go through — at 26 — the ordeals of growing up. But, I soon learned about  vegetable gardening, raising farm animals, drinking iron-oxide rainwater, cooking on a woodstove and using a bucket toilet — among other backwoods scholarship — and ultimately,  this “funny” American successfully homesteaded.

By taking one small step after another, I overcame the paralysis of my city-boy-lost-in-the-woods state of mind. In a sweet stroke of fortune, a kind old-timer passed along his beekeeping know-how and handmade equipment to me. Running a one-man bush-honey operation was a lowly genesis; but it was the first time that I had ever felt productive with my hands. I was loving it!

Homesteading In the City

The next 15 years saw a whirlwind of changes: a return to Florida following the birth of our first child, to be closer to our extended families; living on 10 acres; a new business of lawn maintenance; the rearing of home-schooled children; a move to Pasadena, Calif.; the purchase of a fixer-upper house; the loss of a job; a divorce. Because my plans had failed, I was yearning to go “home” to the land again.