Ever thought of growing your own food but didn’t think it was possible? It is possible in some settings. It might even be the way of the future. If the Dervaes family can do it while living in Los Angeles, I think you can too, though every household needs to assess its own space and resources.
The Dervaes family live 15 minutes from downtown L.A. on what the 2014 article called 1/10th of an acre; The Urban Homestead itself lists a property of about one-fifth of an acre, with roughly one-tenth of an acre devoted to the garden. In itself that’s not strange. What’s crazy is that they manage to maintain a sustainable and independent urban farm. Complete with animals!
In a year they produce around 4,300 pounds of veggies, a reported 900 chicken eggs and 1,000 duck eggs, 25 lbs honey, and pounds of seasonal fruit. There are over 400 species of plants. What?! They have everything they need to ‘live off the land,’ the 2014 article said, though the harvest provides food for the household and for sale and does not establish complete independence from outside supplies. From beets to bees. Chickens to chickpeas.
What the family doesn’t eat they sell from their porch, making around $20,000 a year. (Update, October 2026: The Urban Homestead’s own figures show the yearly harvest varied between 2,300 lb in 2001 and 7,030 lb in 2010 (4,300 lb in 2006), and give sales of about $65,000 a year in 2016; the project notes that these statistics have not been updated since and no longer reflect only the family’s own household (Urban Homestead).) Local organic food is so popular that they don’t have any problems finding customers. Even chefs/owners from local restaurants seek them out.
I tried to figure out how big 1/10th (0.1) of an acre is in perspective to other things . I used this website, findlotsize.com, and put markers around my ‘house.’ I got a rough estimate that mine is 0.062, but my math seems wrong since my place looks way smaller. It’s interesting to know all the same. Check it out … if you’re curious to learn what size yours is.
Here’s the video… Enjoy!
Source: DIY Cozy Home
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Compare the setting of this growing project with another unusual food-growing space in Inside Paris’s Underground Mushroom Farm.
Additional source: Urban Homestead: property and garden measurements.
A productive garden needs a clear accounting of its harvest
The Dervaes project is interesting because it concentrates food production into a small urban setting. To understand the headline, however, distinguish the area being cultivated from the whole property and separate crops measured by weight from eggs counted individually. The earlier phrase “900 chicken” was incomplete; it should not be read as nine hundred birds.
A harvest total also needs a time period. Successive plantings can produce several crops from the same bed during a year, while a single photograph shows only one stage. Recording what was planted, harvested and sold makes the project easier to understand than describing the family as completely independent.
For someone with a much smaller space, the useful starting point is a plant that suits the available light and the time they can give it. A container of herbs or one productive bed can supply something regularly used in the kitchen without needing to reproduce a whole urban farm. Access to water, growing medium and ongoing care remain part of the project.
Financial claims need the same care as harvest claims. Sales revenue is not profit: equipment, feed, seeds, water and labour can all affect what remains. The reported twenty-thousand-dollar figure belongs to the 2015 account and does not establish what another household would earn.
The strongest lesson is therefore about observing a particular system. Notice how the household uses space, plans repeated harvests and finds a use for what it produces. Those details can inspire a manageable experiment while leaving room for the very different climates, budgets and schedules of other growers. A useful first-season record would include dates, costs and harvest amounts rather than only the most impressive photograph.
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