The boys planted Touchstone Gold beets. The spacing is intensive, based on the method used by John Jeavons. One tip to make planting easier: water first. We use a cardboard triangle to make spacing accurate. Once done, we are still covering the hoops with plastic probably until the end of April. Then we’ll switch to fibre.
Aquaponics
Aquaponics, the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, is an old idea that has been more recently transformed into something that looks like the picture above (which came from Wikipedia). Inspired by permaculture, which in turn was inspired by nature and the chinampas of the Aztec’s, aquaponics seems like it could be the way of the future. (Have you seen The Aviator? When I see or hear the phrase ‘way of the future’ I hear it in Leonardo diCaprio’s voice so I try to use it as much as possible.)
Permaculture strategically uses polyculture for our own benefit. In nature, a pond has fish and plants that all mutually benefit each other, the plants feeding off the nitrogen of the fish waste, and the fish using the water that the plants filter and eating some of the plants. Harnessing this cycle can be done in more natural way, by building a pond, encouraging a native species of fish to thrive, cultivating plants that are edible and will help the fish, and then gleaning from the excess so that the balance of the pond will continue without effort.
Or, we could do this in a controlled way like in the photo above and increase production. The plants and the fish don’t have to live together in order to mutually benefit each other. There’s a fish crises in the world today. Fish are so healthy for humans to eat, and so yummy, that we have overfished and contaminated their environment to such an extent that there are doubts they will ever recover fully. Aquaculture in tanks is a viable solution to this problem, but there is massive amounts of fish waste that must be dealt with, just like on any other farm, and energy costs, and water filtration, and a host of other issues. Hydroponics is a very promising and popular way of growing vegetables, but it requires chemicals to grow the plants, and they just don’t taste quite as good. Combine the two, and the waste of the fish can go to feed the plants, which then filter the water, and the farmer gets two crops instead of one without using any chemicals. Not to mention they taste better too and the farmer has used only 2% of the water normally used in agriculture.
Even on a small scale, aquaponics seems like the way to go. A head of lettuce normally takes about 60 days to mature, but in an aquaponics system can take only 20. That’s how long it normally takes for us to get baby greens, so I can only imagine how long that would take. We could grow three times the amount of food in the same space of time. And, you can stack the growing beds like in the picture above, giving you three times the space. I’m terrible at math but I’m fairly sure that’s a lot of food in small space.
On a Farmer’s Mind…
There are a million and one things on my mind right now, and yet I feel strangely at peace. There is calm amidst the chaos. Here are a few things that occupy my thoughts right now:
- Planting. Our planting schedule is tight. We plant something new every week from now until July or August or something ridiculous like that. We can’t get sick or busy because we have to stick to this. It takes self-discipline and we do it by hand. Why do we do it by hand rather than using even a small seeder? Biointensive/French intensive and permaculture all require a planting technique that you could just call crowding. There is no seeder right now designed to do this. The seeds are spaced about 10-25% closer to each other than the packet recommends, and the rows are asymmetrical so that plants grown diagonally from each other rather than being directly across. In a bed that would normally have about 300 leeks I planted 700. By the way, chopsticks make good dibblers. I dibble all the holes first and then drop in the seeds.
- Politics. Food is so entwined with politics, and our government representatives grant power to people over our food so quickly and with such ignorance. It has been interesting looking into the BC Egg Marketing Board’s regulation on Small Lot producers under 399 hens which pretty much cripples all small farms from producing eggs in BC. The government granted this board absolute power over all of the laying hens owned in BC and the board has no ethics at all about what small farms should be able to do.
- Interns. In 10 days our first two interns of the season arrive. We had over 60 applications for what ended up being 5 internship positions, and I found the whole process very challenging. So many highly overqualified young people with 4 year university degrees and farming experience coming out of their earlobes. This will put us at 4 full time farm workers and two part time workers at any given time during the year. When I set up our internships I was appalled at some of the conditions some farm labourers deal with… other farms ask for ‘5am to 5-7pm farm days 6 days a week’ and then pay them almost nothing and don’t cook for them either. We offered 30 hours a week no more than 5 days a week and we pay very little but we cook for you and put you up too. A student who is here to learn won’t learn anything by working 12-14 hour days over 70 hours per week. That’s for full time salaried workers only.
- Ducks. We’re building a duck pond and I have to decide what kind of ducks I want. These ducks aren’t for sale, but we’ll probably eat a few and they have to earn their keep by eating slugs and providing me with poop. I am also planting a duck garden around the pond to help feed them. I’ll keep them supplied with duckweed and grass and then have a bunch of insect-attracting flowers around.
- 9 year olds. My oldest is turning 9. I don’t feel old enough to be the mom of a 9 year old. She still has anxiety and sensory processing disorder and it drives us crazy. She is also brilliant and beautiful and obsessed with fashion. Maybe she’ll be the next Coco Chanel.
- Food Activism. Food activism? I’m writing a third book right now, it’s about food activism. I’m not sure if the title will stick, but it’s the most depressing book to write that I have yet attempted. I have to take a situation that seems completely hopeless and turn it into a positive, an opportunity. In the process I am turning into an obsessive person who annoyingly spouts statistics as you put things into your mouth. That chicken you’re eating? Injected with water! You think that farmer is old? That’s not OLD… the average age is 57!
- Why am I still sick this winter? WHY?! Everyone I know is sick. Time to get out my zombie apocalypse kit.
Our Soil Sifter 2.0. This is a major improvement on Soil Sifter 1.0 which needed two people, one to shovel and one to push the rocks down with a rake because the angle was not steep enough. A little innovation just freed up one person to do something else. The pile we are shovelling from is a pile of composted horse manure mixed with soil and rocks, and we’re removing all the rocks.
