O, pioneers in Pasadena

One family unplugs from technology and lives off the land. Even the blender is pedal-powered.

JULES DERVAES can’t help it. He’s afflicted by a condition for which there is no known cure or even a 12-step program, an uncontrollable urge to change his residential surroundings. He is a serial remodeler, his mind a malarial fever of future projects. But unlike other compulsive home improvers, Dervaes is not obsessed with new or wired makeovers. It’s the old-fashioned and nonelectric that drive him

The upper-arm workout continues in the kitchen, where there’s a hand-cranked blender and peanut butter maker. It’s a nippy pre-dawn inside the 1917 Craftsman bungalow because last year Dervaes and his three adult children, Anais, Justin, 28, and Jordanne, 23, switched to burning scrap wood in their chimney for central heating. But the most ambitious DIY display is the result of Dervaes’ restless tinkering with soil