Part 3

Healthy living encompasses body, mind and spirit. If our minds and bodies are healthy, our spirits can soar above the earthly confines of the physical world. Therefore, keeping ourselves healthy in all ways is of vital importance.

In our Healthy living Program, we are delighted to be able to present you with a series of interviews with leading experts and discussions on innovative research. We seek to provide some fun, practical and simple approaches to address your health on all levels.

Welcome to the world of Healthy living!

Maybe you are like many of us who live in a city, surrounded by ideas of how to improve the planet and how to stop global warming but still without a really good idea on how to start the process.

Supreme Master Television traveled to Pasadena to visit a very interesting family, who live an inspiring and beautiful green lifestyle in the midst of the city. Not only do they live off their own land, they also sell and make a living by cultivating organically grown fruits and vegetables, grown from a piece of land that is a mere tenth of an acre in size!

Would you like your energy bill to be only $19 per month for a household of 5 in Pasadena? The energy is even clean, green wind energy. How about learning how to grow organic vegetables and even make biofuel?

How do they live this almost totally green life, you may ask? So did Supreme Master Television - that’s why we decided to visit them to investigate just exactly how one can live a green life in the middle of the city. Let’s join the Dervaes family in Pasadena and find out more about their organization: “Path to Freedom,” on today’s episode of Healthy living.

Interviewer: When Supreme Master Television visited the Dervaes family, we had the opportunity to meet with other members of the family. Anais, one of the daughters, shared her interesting “green” products and view of life.

Anais: I have a sun oven which we use to cook our food in using the free energy that the sun provides us almost every day. In the summer we use it more, of course, because the suns out; we try to cook maybe four, five meals a week in this and what’s great about this is your food doesn’t burn and they are using these widely in third world countries where deforestation and fuel is limited. Well, right now I’m warming some beans, some black beans for dinner tonight. One thing you have to know about sun ovens is that you put food in earlier, like if you expect rice an hour to cook, what have you, it’s like maybe two hours depending of course on the time and sun, winter longer of course, but you know two rules about sun ovens cooking is you put it in early and you position your sun oven to the sun, so that’s the two things. What’s good about the solar oven cooking is that food doesn’t burn. It’s more nutritious because it requires less water and it’s not high temperature, so it’s retaining the heat at low temperature so you’re getting more nutritious foods and the vitamins are staying in the properties of the food. Well that’s what we do on Saturdays; on Saturdays we go hiking in the mountains and you can put, you know, warm up your soup if you make it the night before. You know, you put the pot of soup in and you come back and you have warm food right away and it’s great, we love using it. Of course it takes time because you kind of have to be in tune with nature, you can’t just say, “I’m home,” you know microwave….you know fifty seconds later you have… now your like ok, is the sun today, what position is the sun and when do I put….. so you become more in tune I think with nature cooking this way.

Interviewer: When our camera crew arrived 45 minutes earlier the family put out their solar oven and put in some beans to warm up. After they finish with their walk through the garden, everyone examines to see just how well solar ovens work.

Anais: It’s very hot. So, and also it’s good you would cook with you know black pots and things. And there are little tips and tricks you’ll learn, you know like if you put in a pan you cover it with another pan to keep you just retain. So those little tricks sometimes what I’ll do is if I need more I put bricks in depending on in winter. One guy who emailed me from I think it was Illinois, I think it was 14 degrees or something like that and it was snowing and he put this out and within 3 hours he had his meal ready, so it can used in all hemispheres. If you have the sun you can cook with this. It is compact. There are different models. We made our own. It’s very huge. It’s made out of recycled plywood and cookie tins that we were recycling and things. But the reflectors are just so huge that they are under repair. But this is a model you can buy. There’s a couple of models you can buy. You can make some out of cardboard, even pizza boxes, so you go on the internet; we have plans on our internet. You can just make it within a day with your kids and you have free energy and cook food, no electricity, no gas, no pollution. It’s all natural.

Interviewer: Being a vegetarian herself, Anais shared her thoughts and reasoning about vegetarianism with our viewers.

Anais: Well, first it was my father read a little when I was about 15, I think 16 years old. My father read a little piece saying that the meat was destroying the rain, every hamburger you ate was destroying so many square feet of the rain forest and he was like, ‘Oh I don’t want to be contributing to the deforestation of the rain forest so lets not, lets cut meat out of our diet.’ And ever since then we haven’t eaten any red meat or chicken. And actually I’ve lost the taste for meat. There are so many greater, better options out there so we’re, my father started us on the path; now it’s ours, so we are becoming more health conscious. Now we are vegetarians. So, now we are like 16 years. So, it’s been a while and of course when we very first became vegetarian we were like, “Oh boy, it’s going to be hard’ and it was kind of hard at the very beginning. Now you go into the health food stores and there are so many options. You know you have soya ice-creams that taste so much better than ice-creams. Now there are more choices.” Because it is becoming almost like a mainstream choice that people have to have that option so people are coming up with better products. It’s easier to become vegetarian now.

Interviewer: Anais Dervaes informed us of how solar oven gets used in different areas across the globe, bringing relief to those in need throughout Africa, without electricity.

Anais: So, and then they are using these in the Darfur refugee camps too because of women. So there’s a little campaign going on sending these on to help women and the environment in the third world countries. you’ll see them being used in India, South America and especially in Africa; there’s a real heavy duty campaign to get these in there, those countries so that they can save lives.

Anais: When people see our project now and they say, ‘Wow, I can’t do what you guys are doing now.’ And well we always like to tell them it’s always about the baby steps. Take small steps. Make simple changes in your life every day and then in time you’ll look back and see how far you’ve come.

Interviewer: Supreme Master Television also met with Jordanne who demonstrated the family’s very interesting blender, powered by human energy through pedaling on a bicycle. Afterwards she introduced her pet friends to us.

Jordanne: This is blackberries we froze from last summer and maple syrup. I’m going to blend it. Using the power of my feet.

Jules: Somebody invented this little thing. It has a shaft right here. And the tire runs against this metal part right here and so the tire will run it and up here it turns this shaft right there. And then on the bottom of this. See when it turns the blades inside the blender and it mixes it. So you are transferring this motion of the wheel going round and round to a blade going the other way. That’s your blender blending with the blades right there so somebody kind of invented that. Now so also we have a bike that grinds grain into flour and they also have parts that you can make this into electrical producing. It produces enough energy to produce a bulb or run, I guess, an appliance. So, it’s all these different things of taking one form of energy, muscle power and turning it into another and replacing electricity. So, there are just alternatives out there. We just thought that was kind of cute because you are exercising and then you are also getting a product out of it. So then when you finish you just drink. Instead of plugging in and having electricity run this giving you a drink you are exercising and you also have the drink when you are finished. So, that’s kind of cool.

Jordanne: These are my pets, primarily they do provide companionship. Originally I had five chickens, I will be getting five chickens again. I have chickens and ducks and two goats, the goats are pets, they do provide compost, we give them yard waste and then they transform it into soil. These are the leash train, I take them for hikes, I take them for walks, I take them to schools for show and tell for kids. They know six commands three tricks. We don't eat our animals. They're just pets primarily and I find that interaction with animals leads to a better you. Going to pet beg? You're going to pet beg? No not on me, you know better than that. You're going to pet beg? Good girl. I know you don’t feel like it? You're going to say hi? Say hi. Good girl! Give me a kiss, going to give me a kiss, can I get a kiss? Come here give me a kiss. Good girl. So the other ones all have to do it outside. She'll dance on command, she will pirouette, but we don't eat the animals. These could be milk producers, but I’m just not going to do that. The ducks are land ducks. They don't need water to be happy; they just need a small pond water to take a dunk every once in a while.

Interviewer: Jordanne Dervaes also shared her views and reasons for being vegetarian.

Jordanne: Well, originally it was a conscious choice, an environmental choice due to the fact so much rainforest was destroyed. Then that was done when I was four years old so I didn't really have a choice. Then it's been my choice ever since. I prefer to drink rice and soya milk over milk. So what I got involved with animals for was because I wanted to show that a lot of people think animals are just like these things in the dairy farm or the battery hens that are in the supermarket and my thing was to show they are actually little individuals with different characters and personalities. This one her name is Blackberry, that one is Lady Fairlite, the duck in the front is Dixie, the one in the middle, he doesn't have a name right now. He's just new and the other one in the back is Dawn, the little chicken going around here is Clementine. So some people say, how can you tell the different voices of your animals, like between the two ducks or the five chickens I have had. And that's what I try to prove doing animals here. So many people are species centric, they just want a cat and dog. So, and being involved with animals, it opens you to more awareness with the environment and with the world around you, because they sense so much beyond our sensing; that when you are in tune with them you get to learn a lot more what's happening. That's why I got involved with so many animals besides the cat and dog, because just dealing with the different species has been rewarding.

This one is Clementine. She was one of five originally. My other chickens died of old age and she's the last remaining- got some babies coming soon. I had one chicken that would watch the sunset every night and I had another chicken that loved being held like a baby. This one doesn't love it so much, but yeah you're not the one that loved to be held like a baby. They were hand raised from babies and I like taking them to schools and too often kids have this ‘ animals are bad, animals are stinky, animal something’, so I like to show them that it's not that way. They're all part of the universe here and we’re sharing the earth with them. They were here first actually in the country; we often try to cage them or put them in little places. So I try to teach children the way to treat them right. Not to fear them, to respect them. All too often people say, ‘Oh, chickens, it's going to attack me’. And I find a lot of children think animals are going to hurt them. Like when they see a goat, they’re like: ‘It’s going to attack me’. You just respect them, and when you show them friendship they will treat you with friendship.

Interviewer: Thanks to Jordanne Dervaes for sharing her love and insight on animals. And thank you to the Dervaes family for showing us how to live an inspiring and beautiful green lifestyle.

Please join us next Monday on Healthy living with our raw food specialist Angela Stokes. Up next after Noteworthy News is Enlightening Entertainment, here on Supreme Master Television.