Tag Archive | aquaponics

Spring goings ons

I finally think that Spring might be coming to Baltimore. We are going to have a night this week close to freezing, but Spring is really trying to push through. We have been busy! Unfortunately busy means that I do not have as much time to write, so I am going to try and bring everyone up to date on the farm. We have many new inhabitants of the farm, 60 some I think. I hate to say that I have lost count! We have our “meat birds”, that we raise out for our family’s year supply of chicken. This year we are raising Rainbow Reds. These are a pasture chicken that does not have as much breast meat as the Cornish Crosses but still produces a 5 pound roasting bird. We also have a couple Cornish Crosses, because they were on sale at Tractor Supply. That store is dangerous in the Spring! Total we have 30 meat birds. They are scheduled to go to butcher the middle of May.

Laying hens: Our current laying flock is getting to be of the age that it is time for them to be soup. We have 14 birds and we are lucky if we get 7 eggs. We have had 3 become egg bound in the last month and a half. I hate to see them suffer and I really hate to waste the meat. So we prefer to butcher them before they start to have problems, this way nothing goes to waste. We keep debating whether all 14 are headed to the soup pot, or if we are going to try and wean out the ones that are still laying. That decision is still up in the air, I hate to go a couple months with no eggs. We are raising out new laying hens. They are 8 weeks old right now. We chose to raise 15 Ameraucana Chickens this year. These birds will lay blue or green colored eggs. I am excited to get the colored eggs, but I have to say I am not impressed with the breed so far. These birds are very skidish. We have never had birds that we could not easily pick up. We handle these birds twice a day and they are still very skidish. When you stick your hand in to change the water or to feed them they freak out, flying against the walls and screaming. The meat birds that we are raising are so much calmer than these birds and those we don’t pick up often. Hopefully they will calm down soon. We also have 6 random laying chickens from Tractor Supply that we used for a Urban Farming presentation. I told you that store was dangerous. They are incredibly friendly and do not see why chickens need to be kept outside, when the living room is so warm and full of kids that feed them leftovers from lunch and dinner. They were moved out to the brooding barn this week, much to their dismay. Ducks: Yes I said ducks. These were purchased just for my Urban Farming presentation, for the 100% cute factor. One is a yellow Pekin Duckling and the other is a Black Runner Duckling. I had already found a farm that would take them after the presentation. This farm even had a pond for them to go live in. Well, I am a complete softly and have fallen head over heals in love with this crazy ducks. They still live in the living room, because the kids can not bear the idea of them being outside. They eat their breakfast of greens while taking their morning swim in the bathtub. They are then dried off with towels by the kids while watching morning cartoons. The ducks have imprinted on my 6-year-old daughter and it is cute beyond words. They follow her everywhere. She is diligently working on teaching them their ABC’s and 123’s. She feels all ducks should be properly educated. Needless to say, the ducks that were never meant to live at my farm, now have names and are not going anywhere, anytime soon, except to play house in the backyard with my daughter. That is all for new animals. We still have the rabbits. We have 3 does still available for sale, after we sell those does we will not breed again still August. We will maintain our breeding stock of 3 bucks and 3 does. These rabbits are absolutely amazing. We took one of our youngest does out to the Urban Farming presentation. There was 50 plus people that wanted to love on her and touch her. She loved every minute of it. She was passed around, flipped upside down and petted for two hours. She never ran from the kids, she let everyone one of them love her. The only rabbits I have ever owned is American Chinchilla Rabbits, so I just assumed that this is how ever rabbit acts. I was amazed at how many people came up to me and told me stories about how grumpy their rabbits were. If you are looking for a rabbit, American Chinchillas are the best way to go, they are fabulous rabbits. Fish: Our tilapia are finally outside! The weather has finally become warm enough for them. Right now we have put them in the sump tank. I have kept the smallest of the fish in the house, so that they can get the food they need to grow. Veggies: We have started our seeds and we have some of our over winter veggies that are growing well. I will do another post about veggies so that I don’t go over 1,000 words in one post…. yes I know I need to post more often, I will work on it. Big BIG things are happening on our Farm. I can’t wait to share all the details about it in the next week our so.

End of June Update

Jul1

Well things are continuing to grow. Our tomato plants are 8 feet tall and my garden looks like an over grown jungle. It is truly a magical thing, to think that a couple of months ago it was just dirt in raised beds, now it is a vegetable wonderland.

This weekend we harvested 10 cucumbers, 2 pounds of beets, 2 pounds of green beans, a couple of handfuls of blueberries that never made it in the house and some strawberries that also never made it out of the strawberry patch. The down side of using children as garden assistants is sometimes they eat more than they bring in the house. But I would rather have that then children that do not like to help in the garden. My little girl not only eats all the berries, but also eats green beans and cucumbers fresh from the plants. We are not able to can the beets right now so I am going to boil them, slice them and freeze them. I would much rather can them, but this works great too.

Everything is continuing to grow. The tomato plants are taking over, to the point that I am having to cut them back and pull tomato plants up and transplant them into the aquaponics system. Our white beans are very close to being harvested, because they are a dry bean I have to pull the whole plant and hang it all to dry. This was the first year that I planted drying beans and I learned that those should not be planted till much later in the season. In fact, I have not planted my black beans or red beans yet because I want them to be able to dry on the vine. The potato plants are starting to turn yellow, I look forward to harvesting fresh potatoes. That is another thing that I would do differently next year. I would plant potatoes in waves, so that I would have a more constant supply and have some ready right at the end of the season for the winter. This is the first year we have planted sweet potatoes and they look great. It is so much fun learning new things. The carrots are also almost ready to be harvested, my husband and I always argue about carrots, I always want to pull them up to see how they are doing, and he wants me to leave them in the ground until fall… we will see who wins.

Now that we have harvested all the beets, I did my second planting in the bed. My husband help me build a pallet trellis for butternut squash to grow up. Under the pallets, I planted head lettuce, hoping that the shade from the butternut will keep them from bolting in the heat. I also planted 2 more rows of beans, and a row of chard. I am just starting to figure out how to do second plantings. I really need to get better at it. Every year life gets in the way, but I guess that is what makes it life. I am looking forward to seeing how this bed turns out, I will post pictures. Below is a picture of it now.

In the aquaponics system the fish are growing great. The new filter that we put in works great for keeping the water clean. I am so frustrated though because the cabbage moths have found all my cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. I have been pulling cabbage worms off every day, but they are still doing a fair amount of damage. With these plants being the aquaponics system there is very little I can do to get rid of them. I have thought about netting the plants, but my husband things that we are just going to have to grow these plants under row covers in the fall when the moths are not around. We are lucky that these are the only major pest that we have in the garden.

This is a very busy time, I am enjoying the fresh veggies and having dirt under my nails. Keep getting dirty!

Seeds! Glorious Seeds

Mar3

The harshness of this winter has made the sweet smell of a packet of seeds even better. Finally, March is here and for me that means starting seeds. I know I am slightly insane, not many people in Baltimore start their seeds this early, but I really like to make sure I get the most out of the growing season. Some good friends of mine used to run a farm and had a stand at the farmers markets, they always started their seeds on March 1st. This meant that they had tomatoes before everyone else and had a more profitable growing season. I know that I am not quite ready for the farmers markets, but I am trying to learn from the best. So far this spring I have already started 216 seeds. Mostly tomatoes, peppers that will be transplanted into the ground and then also a tray of broccoli, spinach, collards, tomatoes, and lettuce that will be transplanted into the aquaponics system, (if it ever thaws out).

I am still learning when it comes to gardening, we have been “gardening” for 6 years. I use the word “gardening” loosely because the first year the only thing we successfully grew was volunteer tomatoes from the compost. The second year we did better, we had maybe two tomato plants. squash and some beans. By the third year we were doing much, much better, we had tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, peppers, blueberries, a few carrots and some herbs. This was the year I learned how much damage chickens can do to seedlings. The fourth year, I made sure the seedlings were fenced in, the chickens were fenced out and it was better than the third. Last year, however, was the first year I feel when we really started growing some of our own food. We had enough for our family as well as enough to give away. This year I would like to do even better than last. We are hoping to grow enough to support our family as well as enough to sell to another family.

All that being said, with seed starting there is always a balance. Heat verses light. I had some seeds that I started really early in a window with a heating pad. They sprouted early, but because there was not enough light they grew too tall and stringy and do not look healthy. The second set I started with a grow light, but I am concerned that they are not warm enough. The seeds are not sprouting very quickly. I hope that I can get the balance right and we can have a good start to our growing season.

Aquaponics seeds grown in Rockwool

All that matters to me right now is that we are on our way. I have hope that spring is coming and soon I will have my hands deep in dirt! For now I have done everything I can do, seeds are ordered and some are planted, potatoes are ordered. We are building more garden beds when weather allows and we are turning compost. Those tomatoes and cucumbers warm off the vine are going to taste so wonderful this year.

Winter aquaponics

Jan7

Like most of the country we woke up to very cold temps. We prepared the chickens, the rabbits, cut firewood, sealed up the house and checked on the garden but we were not prepared in the greenhouse. We had a grow light on thinking that would put off enough heat to keep everything above freezing, well we were wrong. Our main fish tank was fine, the sump and the grow bed was fine, it was the small pvc pipes in the system that froze.
One of the pvc pipes that froze is the pvc under the bell siphon. This caused the water to back up in the upper grow bed. Luckily my husband caught it in enough time that we did not have any over flow. He disconnected all the small pvc and brought them inside to defrost. He also used the grill as a temporary great source. We know this is not ideal but it works. In Baltimore we do not have many days with weather like this so I think a temporary solution will work for now. I think some recycled pool noodles will help insulate the small pvc pipes and more grow lights and a small heat source with a thermostat will help. We also have a part of the green house that faces south and does not get much sun. Adding ridged foam insulation for the winter would help as well. There is even insulation that has a foil backing that can reflect the light and heat from the North.
We are glad we have not lost any fish and that the broccoli that is in the system seems perfectly happy. These are lessons learned that will help us improve the system and more forward.

Sunday Summary

Dec23

In the Kitchen:

It is the week of Christmas, every year I plan on giving my family homemade gifts and every year life gets the best of me and I do not do it. This year I did however make homemade caramel candies. The only problem with the “gifts” is that my family is eating them faster than I can package them to give away! So I guess that means I have found a good recipe and hopefully it will make a good gift for our family and friends next year…so if you get some act surprised! The blog that I found the recipe on I really enjoy and am inspired by it, if you have time check it out! http://www.willowcreekfarm.wordpress.com

Meat Birds:

I received a Christmas gift early! As I mentioned last week our meat birds need to processed. I have been sending emails, making phone calls and asking everyone I know, in order to try and find a processor or someone to let us barrow a plucker. Well the family that I buy my rabbit feed from was able to get me in contact with another family that processes birds for the 4-H kids. I tried most of last week to get ahold of this family and when I had not heard from them by Thursday at lunchtime I had just come to the conclusion we were going to be processing these birds on Friday. When my husband called me during his lunch break on Thursday I told him I still had not heard from the processor and that since he was off on Friday we would just have a processing party. He then informed me that he had to work on Friday. We were out of feed, so the birds had already received their last meal, I had two choices; buy feed or do what needed to be done. Well, I decided it was time for me to put on my big girl panties and process these birds. I did have some help, a high schooler from our church is a hunter and was willing to come and give me a hand for a couple of hours, but neither of us had ever plucked chickens before and I really wanted roasters. I spent the rest of Thursday afternoon mentally preparing for what was going to happen on Friday. I received a phone call at 5:30 Thursday evening from the processor. He was planning to process our birds Friday morning and I all I had to do was drop them off after 9:00. I screamed. Not just a little wahoo scream but a win the lottery scream. I was so grateful to not have to kill, scald, pluck, gut and package these 23 birds, Merry Christmas too me!

The Rabbits:

Well it has been a sad week and a half. Of Aurora’s 7 kits only 2 are still alive. The good news is that they appear to be very fat and happy. We put a heating lamp directly above the nesting box outside the metal wire cage. I think the babies were getting too cold, Aurora was not covering them up. She had pulled her fur, and she made a great nest but she was not covering up the babies. The heat lamps really seemed to help them, it was funny to go into the Bunny Barn and see the babies “sun bathing” on top of the nesting material, most of the time belly up!

Laying Hens:

We have a little red hen that is a Houdini Chicken. She gets out of the chicken pen everyday. I know she is not getting out when we go in or out. I have checked the fence line and there is no holes or cracks. How is she getting out? I guess that is a problem we will have to solve this week.

Something that we are very grateful for is that we have been able to sell our eggs. We have a couple family that buy from us regularly, and it is nice to be able to make some spending money. Mostly it just pays for the chicken feed but every little bit helps.

Aquaponics:

I have transplanted some broccoli plants into the aquaponics system, I will keep you posted on how they do through the winter. Almost everything else has died. All we have left is a lonely beet plant, it seems to be doing well, but the beet is not getting any bigger. We are going to leave it in the system just to see what it does. I was not able to plant seeds this week, there is always the hope for next week, but with it being Christmas I am not optimistic.

Merry Christmas everyone, from our family to yours!

Busy Summer, Aquaponics part 2

Sep18

We have had such a busy summer that I have not had a chance to write. But busy is good sometimes, especially when it involves planting, harvesting, building and other farm activities. In the last month we have finished the first half of our aquaponics system, finished the bunny barn, harvested and replanted the garden, raised bunnies and started more baby chicks. I am going to try and write about each one of those things over the next week. Wish me luck!

First, I wanted to take a moment and think about the people in Colorado. There is a blog that I follow that is about a homesteading family in the mountains in Colorado. They have left their homestead, had to find new homes for all their animals, and are told that they can not go back to their house for 6-9 months. I can not even imagine! Reading about what they are going through really puts me in my place… I have nothing to complain about! My house is not perfect, my kids drive me nuts sometimes and there is always work to be done… But praise God I have a house, kids and work. Please do not become numb to the suffering of others. If nothing else, it helps us keep our lives in prospective.

OK, I dried my tears and now I am ready to tell you about the great things we have done this summer. We have finally finished our aquaponics system! Eventually we would like to have two systems up and running, but we are very excited about the one right now!
For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about let me tell you about my system. It started with a 275 gallon pallet tank, this is the home for our fish. We currently have just pond gold fish in there because they are more tolerant of our errors and the learning curve. In February the gold fish will be replaced with tilapia.

There is a pipe that the top of the fish tank that overflows into a gravel plant bed. In the gravel bed we have tomato plants, and beans. The gravel bed is a flood and drain system. Meaning just that, it fills up with water and then it empties. The process repeats itself all the time, keeping the roots of the plants wet.

When this bed drains it empties into a sump bed or a deep water culture bed. Currently, this bed just has a couple feeder fish in it to keep up with the mosquito larva. But normally this bed would have a floating foam raft with lettuce and other greens growing in it. I will post a picture of that when I have it in the system, right now I am still starting the seeds. We had a batch of bad seeds and I had to start over, it was very sad. In the bottom of the sump bed there is a pump that pumps the water back up and into the fish tank… and the process starts all over again.

You can see the black pump in the water and the white PVC pipe going up the side of the tank.

Most of you can stop reading here, but for our aquaponics friends I will let you know what supplies we used.

~The bed liner is Dura Skrim 20 WW 6’ x 50’ from Global Plastic Sheeting.

~The pump is ActiveAqua Pump 500 GPH from the Aquaponics Store.

~The net pots for the floating rafter were also from the Aquaponics Store.

~The Grow media is ViaStone from the Home Depot.

~The tank is off craigslist.

~The greenhouse is 12×10 from Harbor Freight.

If you have any specific questions let me know. We are very happy with it and we look forward to what it is going to do through the winter.

The first weekend in August, Love it!

Aug5

The weather has been amazing for August, which has been wonderful and has allowed us to be very productive.

Our bunnies are getting big and it is time to wean them off their mommies. We have turned our unused chicken coop into a bunny nursery. There is enough room for all 15 of the babies to be able to run and play until they are full grown. We will be removing the bunnies from their mothers gradually over the next week. So far it is going great and everyone is enjoying the extra space and room at the water bowl.

The kids picked the rabbits that they are going to be showing for 4H. These rabbits will get a lot more one on one time than the other rabbits. We want them to be used to being handled as well as used to noises and other animals. Everyone in the family is enjoying the extra cuddle time.

This weekend we also worked on the aquaponics system. Building it is taking longer than we really wanted it to, we were hoping to have it up and running over a year ago, but the supplies was more expensive than we thought. We are also struggling with getting ideas from our heads, to paper, and than to final product. We are learning communication skills that are beneficial to our marriage. I think the important part is we are still married and still making progress on the system, both wins in my book. We are now at the plumbing stage, very frustrating, but hoping to take small steps everyday and keep moving closer to our goal. I will be starting seeds indoors this week for the system, so it needs to be up and running in less than two weeks. I have confidence that we are that close!

This weekend I also experimented with making gluten-free pop tarts. I used the pie crust recipe from my last post and filled them with the jams that I have made this spring and summer. I baked them at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, until golden. They are amazing. I can’t wait to bake some cinnamon ones! It was crazy easy and super tasty. We have already eaten them all and I need to make another batch.

As far as harvesting veggies goes, we are still going strong with peppers. The tomatoes have slowed down quite a bit and so have the cucumbers. We had our first ever cantaloup today, it was wonderful. We should have let it sit on the counter a day to soften even more, but we ate it in one sitting so it must not have been that bad.

Time for me to go have my tea and relax for the night. I hope everyone has a great week.

Aquaponics- Part 1: Greenhouse

Jul3

We have finally taken a step to following our aquaponics dream. Some married couples go away for weekends alone, some go to marriage retreats, some go to marriage counseling…we build a green house. We decided to buy a kit instead of building it from recycled materials like we had planned. We knew time was short and we wanted to stop procrastinating. We bought a 12 x 10 foot greenhouse from Harbor Freight. It took us 3 evenings and 1 full day to put it together. It was not a labor intensive project, it was a test in patience and teamwork, which I think we passed with flying colors. After 6 frustrating months of not feeling like we had accomplished very much, it was very rewarding to build something together and have a feeling of accomplishment.

There are a lot of blogs about putting together this greenhouse out there… I think our only comment on the process is go slow, don’t skip steps, read the directions and be patient. Here are some pictures of the project and it came to life. Thank you to everyone that is helping us to make this a dream come true.

Shades Of Lavender

Gluten-free living, growing food, raising chickens and loving my family!