Jules C. Dervaes, Jr.

(1947 � December 2016) was an urban farmer and a proponent of

the urban homesteading movement. Dervaes and his three adult children operated an
urban market garden in Pasadena, California as well as other websites and online
stores related to self-sufficiency and "adapting in place."

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and education
2 Self-sufficient in the city
3 Religious activities
4 Trademark controversy
5 Death
6 See also
7 External links
8 References
Early life and education[edit]
Dervaes grew up in Tampa, Florida and was the valedictorian of the class of 1965 at
Jesuit High School. He later attended Loyola University New Orleans on full
academic scholarship and graduated with a B.S. in Math and a minor in Computer
Science in 1969.

After college he taught for several years. In 1973 he emigrated from the U.S. to
New Zealand, specifically to a rural area on the west coast of South Island. While
there, he became a beekeeper and subsistent farmer, complete with poultry and small
livestock, living a simpler life and starting a family.

Dervaes and his family moved back to the Tampa Bay area in 1975, to a 10-acre plot
in rural Pasco County, Florida. Here he returned to beekeeping and other agrarian
pursuits, as well as teaching, although to a lesser degree. In 1984, the Dervaes
family moved again, this time to Pasadena, California. At this point he went back
to college, earning a theology degree. It was in Pasedena that he fully honed his
urban homesteading practices.[1]

Self-sufficient in the city[edit]

Dervaes had a one-fifth acre lot in Pasadena, California,[2] on which he and his
family raised three tons of food per year. This provided 75 percent of their annual
food needs,[3] 99 percent of their produce and helped them sustain an organic
produce business. They also raised ducks, chickens,[4] goats, bees, compost worms
and are running an aquaponics fish experiment.

Dervaes started experimenting with self-sufficiency while he lived in New Zealand

and later in Florida, then decided to see how efficient he could make an urban
homestead in Pasadena, California, USA. According to Natural Home magazine, "The
Dervaeses' operation is about 60 to 150 times as efficient as their industrial
competitors, without relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides."[3]

In addition to growing a significant amount of food, the Derveas family attempted

to live off-grid as far as possible and have invested significant amounts of money
to experiment with other ways of attaining self-sufficiency. They have 12 solar
panels on the roof of the house, a biodiesel filling station in the garage, and a
solar oven in the backyard;[5] they use a wastewater reclamation system, a dual-
flush toilet, a composting toilet, and a number of hand-cranked kitchen appliances
(to reduce power consumption). They also use solar drying, and have a cob oven.

Dervaes owned several websites, including julesdervaes.com, pathtofreedom.com,

urbanhomestead.org, urbanhomesteading.com, freedomgardens.org, peddlrswagon.com,
backyardchickens.org, barnyardsandbackyards.org, thehiddenyears.org, and
dervaesinstitute.org.

pathtofreedom.com now redirects to urbanhomestead.org; it was originally about

Elian Gonzales.[6]

As of 2008, Path to Freedom got five million hits per month from over 125 different
countries.[5]

The Dervaes family was featured on National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers
in 2012 and briefly appeared in a trailer for the show.[7]

Religious activities[edit]
In 2008, Dervaes operated websites promoting prophecies of the "end times" and
criticizing the Worldwide Church of God's (WCG) doctrinal changes from 1995. The
site's mission was "TO SHOW that repeated WARNINGS to God�s Church, beginning in
1986 after Herbert W. Armstrong�s death, were ignored, by documenting the outright
rejection of the messages; TO WARN God�s people that the unique challenge of the
Last Era is continuing to be met with the wrong solutions or none at all; TO
ANNOUNCE the true and only way we can be prepared for the establishment of the
Kingdom of God and Christ�s Second Coming."[8]

In 2011, Dervaes took the websites down but an archived version can be found here
at the Wayback Machine (archived March 10, 2008).

The family has integrated Seventh-day Sabbath observance into its business
practices, per WCG's teachings.[9]

The Dervaes Institute is registered as a tax exempt 508(c)(1)(a) organization,[10]

a status which is limited to "churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and
conventions or associations of churches"[11]

Trademark controversy[edit]
In 2007, the Dervaes Institute applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to
register the phrase "urban homesteading" as a service mark.[12] In 2008, the
institute followed up with a second service mark application, for the phrase "urban
homestead".[13] "Urban homesteading" was registered, but only on the Supplemental
Register, after initially being denied for not being sufficiently distinctive, on
June 2, 2009.[12] "Urban homestead" was registered on the Principal Register on
October 5, 2010.[13]

In 2011 the Dervaes Institute began sending notifications to maintainers of

websites who used these terms that these terms were now under their trademark and
that they were not to be used without crediting the Dervaes family. The Dervaes
Institute asserts that it's protecting a legitimate business interest, that their
usage of the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading" are new usages and
distinctive, and that its trademark of the term "urban homesteading" prevents other
corporations from trademarking it. However, the same usage is documented back to at
least 1976 in Mother Earth News.[14]

This has caused an uproar within the urban homesteading community and created a
backlash against the Dervaes family. An activist group called "Take Back Urban
Home-steading(s)," was started on Facebook on 16 February 2011.[15]

On 21 February 2011, Corynne McSherry, Intellectual Property Director of the

Electronic Frontier Foundation (which is representing Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen,
Los Angeles-based authors of The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient
Living in the Heart of the City, and publisher Process Media), sent a response to
the Dervaes Institute and published the letter on the Electronic Frontier
Foundation website.[16]

On 4 April 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a petition to cancel the
trademark on "urban homestead".[17] On 7 April 2011, Denver Urban Homesteading
filed a petition to cancel the trademark on "urban homesteading".[18] Over the
course of 2011, the Facebook group evolved into a general urban homesteading
resource.

The urban homesteading trademark was cancelled by the federal court in Denver on
November 5, 2015.[19]

Death[edit]
On December 27, 2016, via their Facebook page and website, urbanhomestead.org,
Dervaes' children, Anais, Justin and Jordanne, announced that their father had died
as a result of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 69.[20]