Interview :: Path to Freedom

Interview :: Path to Freedom

Jules Dervaes and his family are fueling a revolution.  More and more Americans are waking up to reality and beginning to recognize that we have real problems at hand concerning energy and the environment.  An increasing numbers of these concerned citizens are seeking ways to live more conscious, self-sufficient lives.  However trying to transition from the consumer culture towards a more sustainable way of life takes both inspiration and information.  That’s were Jules Dervaes comes in.  He calls his project Path to Freedom.  It’s an attempt to live more sustainably and rely less on factory farming and genetically modified foods.  But instead of moving to the country and starting a farm, Jules Dervaes and his family stayed in their own neighborhood to make their change.  They live in Pasadena, California on a small urban lot.  Their path towards sustainability, the Path to Freedom as Jules likes to say, means making real change right at home.

The family grows much of its own food on 1/10 of an acre of cultivated land- over 6,000lbs of produce!  They sell what they don’t use and preserve much of the harvest for the off season.  They raise urban chickens, ducks and goats.  They brew their own bio-diesel, use solar energy to heat water and produce electricity and cook food in an outdoor oven made of straw and clay.  All of this happens not in a remote location as an experiment but in town as a way of life!  The Dervaes family also operates a website through which they share the story of how they have been and are continuing to transition from a lifestyle of consumption to one in which they are consciously living and learning about how to do for themselves.  Examples of people making real change can help others who are ready to do the same.  In fact hundreds of thousands of people visit their website on a regular basis looking for knowledge about how to make this kind of change.

Recently I had the great pleasure of talking to Jules Dervaes about his Path to Freedom project.  Feel free to download our conversation to learn more about a man and his family living and sharing a way to live a more conscious life.  Prepare to be inspired and informed!