Community Supported Agriculture

This past spring a lady at church e-mailed about the CSA farm she wanted to join. The hook - if we all ganged together, we could get cheaper delivery than if we went separate, and we also wouldnt have to drive out to the farm every week.

I figured a half share wouldnt be too dangerous - after all, how many fruits and vegetables could that actually be?

A lot, it turns out.

Between the crops Im harvesting from my aquaponics system and the boxes of fruits and veggies from the CSA, we are well and truly over-run with yummy vegetables. Luckily, the CSA publishes recipes and lets us know what these things are. I had never eaten Patty Pan squash before, for example. Who knew a meal of Patty Pan Squash Fritters could be so amazingly filling.

Tonight we had sauteed beet greens with pistou from last years garden, along with the squash fritters and pickeled onion and red beet eggs. So good! So filling!!

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Aquaponics Synergies with Other Topics

At left:

Example of a book you could look to for info on creating a 365 aquaponics system

I love aquaponics. But when youre looking to create your aquaponic garden, you can pull from numerous other resources. One of my favorite topics is year-round gardening.

I love the idea of being able to have vegetables (and fish...) during late fall, winter, and early spring. Most of the current aquaponics literature talks about growing in climates that are warm throughout much of the year, which makes it easy to have your fish and veggies year round. But what do you do when the temperature plummets to crazy low?

Last time I mentioned the Gaisma.com site. The interface is a bit clunky, but I love being able to look at climate information for any major city anywhere in the world. So if Im reading a book written by Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm, for example, I can look up his address in google maps, find the closest major city, and see what his climate is. In Eliot Colemans case, thats either Augusta or Bangor, ME. If the lengths of his days and his temperatures are similar, I can have some confidence that the solutions hes developed can be applied to my situation.

On the other hand, if the person giving me advice on winter crops has their garden on the equator, I may want to be a bit more sceptical about whether the measures that work for them will be adequate for me.

PS - I havent posted much lately for various reasons. But the most trivial reason for my silence is running up against my google.com storage limit. Getting me and my credit card and the website to buy more space together all at the same time wasnt working. Luckily for me, Google has shifted to their "Google Drive" concept, along with 5GB of free space (I think it was 1GB before). Ill still be absent a bit for the next few weeks for the other reasons Ive been hiding. Towards the end of June, however, you can expect to hear from me more regularly.

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