A run through our greenhouse where we are in the process of building out a new section . The growth of the tomatoes and lettuce is remarkable. This was filmed early April 2012. Feel free to share on your Facebook page.
This is a guest blog post written by Gina Cavaliero, of Green Acre Organics. What follows are Gina’s reflections on how much their commercial systems have expanded in the past year and a half, and how far they have come from the poor training they originally received to all that they have learned and are committed to passing on at their own Green Acre’s Aquaponic Farming training in April.
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Green Acre Organics - a year ago
Just a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Vegas to present at the World Aquaculture Society’s Aquaculture America event. I was asked to give two presentations for the aquaponic session and shared the Green Acre story as a case study and also talked about aquaponic sales and marketing strategy.
While preparing the case study presentation on Green Acre, I was amazed as I compiled the data that showed our farm’s growth. When we started out, our farm had the following grow specs:
960sqft DWC grow trough (90 sqm)
240sqft nursery area (22sqm)
1600g rearing tanks (6057L)
Now it has:
1800sqft DWC grow trough (168sqm)
192sqft media bed (18sqm)
132 ft NFT
100sqft veticals (still being installed 9sqm)
240sqft shallow grow troughs(still being converted 22sqm)
312sqm nursery area(22sqm)
1600g rearing tanks (6057L)
No wonder we have been insanely busy! Along with our farm growing, so has our everyday know how of how to manage it. Just the other morning as we were harvesting, we were laughing at our archaic early procedures for harvesting and how much they had changed. It then occurred to us that we had spent the better part of our first year figuring out how to do the everyday things required to operate an aquaponic farm efficiently. Our education had so many holes! We never were taught things like seeding and planting, or harvesting and clean up or how to effectively package our products. Most of it seems pretty simple right? We had gardened and knew how to start some seeds and plant a plant and pick a tomato or a head of lettuce, but we had never had to start 2000 seeds or harvest pounds upon pounds of lettuce! Also there was the element of doing it all very efficiently as there are only two of us to accomplish the job.
Over time we figured out what now are some incredible stream lined processes, but getting there meant a lot of trial and error. Some with more error then others! At least the process of trial and error is great as it not only tells you what works but definitely eliminates what doesn’t. However that’s a tough amount of lost time for a young business when you have to figure it as you go and it is why we are so incredibly excited about the tremendous head start we are going to give those that take our upcoming classes.
We not only cover all these daily processes and share our “tricks of the trade” but also topics like how to have a great presence at a farmers market or how to run a buying club or CSA. We even share things like managing cold storage for your products. That seems simple enough. You just purchase a walk in cooler, right? Sure if you want to spend a good bit of money for a decent sized one, but how do you also keep your product cold while delivering it? A bunch of coolers filled with ice works but not for long stretches and it is far from efficient. There is so much hands on knowledge to running a farm and in Green Acre’s Aquaponic Training – The Complete Course, we share every bit of how we do it.
Murray Hallam Well , good morning I am talking with Penn Parmenter of Westcliffe in Colorado. How are you today?
Penn Parmenter. Great, I am talking with you from my mountain.
Murray Hallam. Up in the mountains there. That is about as far away from Australia as you can get I think, up there in altitude of the Rockies, so I find it quite interesting. Anyway, look I want to talk to you today about seed saving. In the training you are going to be doing in Florida next month, I see you have got listed there you are going to train us in seed saving. Now, why should we save seeds?
Corn growing in a field. Corn, one of the more difficult seeds to save.
Penn Parmenter. Well I’ll tell you something Murray, If you think the food movement is on, I’ve got to tell you the seed movement is really on. It seems like seed is being threatened world wide, but there is a wonderful pro-active movement out there of people who are teaching and learning about seed saving, and it is a missing link in our gardening here in America and we really need to start again.
Murray Hallam. Why do you think that is? Why do we need to save seeds ? Isn’t it just as easy to go down to the seed store and buy a packet of seeds?
Penn Parmenter. Well besides thinks like genetically modified organisms being created that can possibly cross with the seeds we could be getting in the future, there is nothing more self sufficient and sustainable than a seed. It has a built in a self replication program, and it also has an adaptation program. It immediately adapts to the environment it is grown in, so the longer you save it the stronger it gets for your garden.
Murray Hallam. So, do you mean then, if I grow for example a tomato bush and I save the seed, the next time I plant that seed, the tomato bush will be much more adaptable to my area; Is that what you are saying?
Penn Parmenter. I am saying it remembers, yes. It carries with it it’s genetic history and it’s…..as our teacher said “It is more elegant than any computer chip could ever be” and it remembers and adapts from year to year.
Murray Hallam. Isn’t that fascinating . Well this sounds to me like this could be easy, but it could be difficult. Tell me, is it easy and difficult, or is it just easy?
Penn Parmenter. Well, the good news is that there is at least three levels of seed saving and we have a seed library here where you can check seed out and return more than you take, but we have it set up so that you can check out easy-to-save seed, intermediate-to-save, and difficult-to-save. So you start from the beginning of course, and begin with easy-to-save seed, which by the way, the five most, easy things to begin with are, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, beans and peas. And it’s easy, because you don’t have to do anything you just grow them and you don’t really have to worry about how many varieties you have grown, or any distance, or isolating them, and you just save the seed and they come true.
Murray Hallam. Wow, so that’s good because they just happen to be probably some of the most important vegetables don’t they, to feed yourself and your family. So what would be a difficult seed then, and what would make it difficult?
Penn Parmenter. That’s a great question you know because it’s probably kind of perspective, like an intermediate seed may only be difficult because you need to isolate it which means you need to only grow one variety at a time, so they don’t cross within their family. That may not be hard but it just means you have to grow one kind. Difficult means it may take two years because it is a biannual, you have to isolate it and it might need a really large population like 200 plants. So to a gardener that may seem hard but to a small farmer having 200 plants of corn is not that hard, so it kind of depends on your perspective, but I tell you when you start with easy seed, you get back so much that you instantly become addicted and can’t wait to try the next step.
Murray Hallam. Sounds good. Look we’ve got over here, we call them heritage seeds, some people call them heirloom seeds or open pollinated seeds I think might be the other term; what’s so special about them?
Penn Parmenter. That’s true. all three of those names are a good thing to look for when you are buying seeds, um, but hybrid seed is simply a cross between two other parents. There is nothing wrong with a hybrid, it’s just that if you save the seed from it, it won’t come true to what it was before. It will have the entire genetic background of both parents.
Murray Hallam. It could come out as anything then, like it could come out as, like either mum or dad for example of where it was generated from.
Penn Parmenter. That’s right, so you look for “OP” for open pollinated, now seed packets or the name of the variety has to say if it is a hybrid, which it will either say hybrid or the letter F1 which is first generation, but it doesn’t always say heirloom or heritage, you kind of sometimes you just know that, now more and more the seed packets and the catalogues are starting to label which ones are heirloom or heritage, so but hybrid it has to say it.
Murray Hallam. I hear it and read about it that people are worried about collecting seeds because of, there are some big companies that are trying to patient them and stop people from using them. Is that right, or is that just a story?
Penn Parmenter. You know, the problem is there is these chemical companies are messing around with crops crossing seeds with chemicals and crossing seeds with all kinds of things and they are often experimenting with a wind pollinated crop like corn so we can’t control what happens. Things can cross with a neighbours or a farm far away if the wind blows, so when you look at a catalogue it will have a “safe seed” pledge in it, where they are saying they not knowingly buy any seed that is a GMO. They say that because they have to protect themselves in case contamination happens from the wind.
Murray Hallam. Yes, OK , so as an amateur seed collector if I decide I am going to start saving seeds, I guess you will tell us how to do that won’t you, because I remember once trying to collect seeds off a lettuce and it was kind of hard and a bit of a mess but I guess there will be techniques you will be able to show us how to do that will there?
Penn Parmenter. Absolutely, especially using household items like a brown paper bag, or a jar that you have in your kitchen, that you know the way in is with the tomato the gateway drug to gardening, it’s also the gateway drug to seed.
Tomato bush in flower. Growing tomatoes can be come an addiction.
Murray Hallam. Is that right. It’s an interesting way to describe it !
Penn Parmenter. There is people out there you know their message is “no seed – no food”. If the seed in the world is controlled then there is no food, but the real message might be “no seed – no beer” if that what’s needed to get your attention.
Murray Hallam. To get through to people. Well look I reckon that I am really looking forward to this seminar you are going to be running in Florida in April, and this is going to be really interesting. You guys are going to be really busy because you are also doing the seminar on how to build those wonderful greenhouses that your husband builds, so I think there could be a day each on these, but we have to squeeze it into a day, so that is going to be really really intense.
Penn Parmenter. We are really looking forward to it, in fact that’s why Cord is not here with us today he is off working on that giant sixty four foot sustainable greenhouse, so were going to be with our bells on in Florida, so I hope everyone will come and see us.
Murray Hallam. I think there will be a lot of people there so , look thanks for talking to me this morning and we will see you in Florida next month.
Penn Parmenter. Thanks Murray and have a great day.
Murray Hallam. Bye……
We have partnered with the excellent folk at Green Acres and The Aquaponics Source to offer you a life changing Aquaponics Course.. In ... April of 2012, Green Acre Organics proudly presents the training that will reshape farming forever.... To be held in Florida USA April 2012 Are you ready to join the Farming Revolution ?
Go Here for further information.
Green Acre’s Aquaponic Farming.
The Complete Course
It is getting exciting. Only a few days to go and we will be into our first ever Australian Aquaponics Farm Workshop.
We have guest lecturer Dr Wilson Lennard all booked and ready to fly in early Monday morning. He will be, as usual a wealth of information as he takes you through the various aspects of Commercial Aquaponics. Additionally we have a Greenhouse expert coming for day 3 of training to discuss all aspects of greenhouse technology.
Day one will commence at the beautifully appointed Jimboomba Tavern and we will cover in detail the science of Aquaponics, microbiology, fish and plant health. In the practical sessions we will look at system elements and discuss what goes where in an aquaponics farm build.
Running the air at full throttle in the main fish tank. We have just filled the system with water from the dam and we are hoping for a very quick "cycle" to be ready for the fish.
We have been busy building a display / instruction area where the hands on training will be carried out. We have had days of torrential rain followed by stinking hot days. That is the nature of late summer weather here in South East Queensland. Days have ranged from 28 to 33 degrees C (83 – 93 F) . So make sure you bring a sunglasses, hat and sunscreen for the outdoor segments.
Participants are coming from every state of Australia except Tasmania, from Tokyo Japan, Estonia and Israel.
At this time of writing there are 4 spaces left unfilled at the regular price of 1290.00 per person and reduced price for spouse or business partner. Go here to book. Click on the “Buy Now” button and follow the prompts.
If you are thinking of coming book now……sorry, you cannot just turn up on the day. We have to have numbers for the caterers and venue organisers.
Loading the 20mm (3/4") gravel into the new grow beds. The auto siphon assembly can be seen.
Why do you find Aquaponics so interesting? Most folk tell me that their interests are more than one. This is the order of most common interest.
Food purity. (includes food nutrition)
Food security.
Food sovereignty.Rarely do folk get into Aquaponics just to save money, but it is very much an added bonus. It is a money saver and will become increasingly so as time goes by.The first and most common reason, “Food purity” is just so important. Evidence is emerging almost daily about the ill effects of long term consumption of food contaminated by farm chemicals, together with preservatives, colourants, fortifications and the like. If you wish to avoid serious illness in your life, and just want to feel good, then better quality food is essential in your diet. It is where it all begins. At the dinner table.
One aspect of the “food purity” side of things has struck home to me recently.
My youngest daughter has been digonosed with breast cancer of the very worst kind.
Bii just as she is having hair loss from the chemo therapy.
Breast cancer is just so incideous and devastating to the patient. We have discovered that the whole family suffers with Bri. To witness first hand the physiological as well as the physical damage done by the cancer is very confronting. As we assist our beautiful daughter through this we find that so many little things are affected and altered in daily life because of the cancer. The effect on the children trying to adjust to the idea that Mum might die one day soon, and that she is just so sick after every round of chemo. The fact that breast cancer is a direct attack on her womanhood is a difficult adjustment to make.
My daughter is a girl of very strong character and she is rising to the challenge.
Bri is trying to blog about her experience so that other women might somehow be helped. See her blog here.
The need to do all we can to avoid disease like cancer is entirely in our own hands. Most of us do little or nothing to improve our diet until we have a medical crisis of some sort, and not even then.
Now, let me be clear, I do not believe that breast cancer comes about purely because of inadequate diet or poor quality food. There are many and various causes of cancer, but there is a need to do all we can and I believe that our diet plays a much larger part than most medicos will admit to. Better quality food is something we CAN do something about. Even small incremental improvements make a difference.
Scary stuff when they wheel this lot up beside your bed.
Just last night I saw on TV a news story where some Professor of some sort or another says there is no link between food additives, colourants and the like and health. You would think that it would be patiently obvious that it is not good to be consuming food that has been altered and tampered with.
So, what is it really all about? It is about family and all that means. I want the best for my family, and I am sure you do too.
Today’s health conscious consumers hunger for good, clean, locally grown food. On April 21 – 24, and April 26 – 29, Green Acre Organics, in partnership with The Aquaponic Source and Practical Aquaponics, will offer a comprehensive aquaponic farming course titled “Green Acre Farming – The Complete Course”. This course, taught in Brooksville, Florida, will teach entrepreneur farmers how to meet those needs through both classroom and hands-on instruction.
Green Acre Organics
Our approach is that Aquaponics is a balanced ecosystem…. through a family farm. Ordinary people can do it. You do not need a million dollars, or highly mechanized components to grow your own food for yourself and your community.
Green house employing passive heating and cooling.
Murray Hallam. Good morning, my name is Murray Hallam of Practical Aquaponics and I’m here this morning talking to Cord and Penn Parmenter from Wycliff in Colorado. Now I’ve been told that you pair are going to be at the training that is going to be happening in Florida in April. Is that correct?
Listen to the Podcast.
Penn Parmenter. That’s right. We’re looking forward to coming to Tampa to teach people about sustainable greenhouses.
Murray Hallam. Yeah, well this has really got me interested because we get a lot of people talking to us from colder climates and I understand you two live in the Rocky Mountains somewhere is that right? Where’s Wycliffe?
Cord Parmenter. Well actually it’s called Westcliffe.
Murray Hallam. Oh, sorry.
Cord Parmenter. It’s in the south central part of the state of Colorado, and we are at about 8,100 feet (2,500m) and yeah, we get some pretty cold weather and our greenhouses seem to do pretty well in this cold climate.
Murray Hallam. And, do you get warm summer days as well?
Passive Solar greenhouse under construction.
Penn Parmenter. Oh boy does it get hot in the Rockies. The sun is very intense at high altitude and so the normal greenhouses can spike really hot and get very cold in the day, so these greenhouses can stabilise those fluctuations using thermal mass.
Murray Hallam. Ok, do you mind explaining to me what you mean by thermal mass and ah just exactly how does that work, and look I’m looking at your website at the moment and I think I can see some barrels in the back of the greenhouses. Is that right?
Cord Parmenter. Yes, there are a lot of different kinds of thermal mass, earth mass being one that is readily available, we like to use water mass, basically, thermal mass is any dense material that gives and takes heat. The water mass is much more efficient about absorbing the heat, also giving it back at night. So we like to lean our greenhouses mostly toward water mass. We also use the thermal mass of the earth, raised beds and any other concrete or brick structures within the greenhouse.
Murray Hallam. That is really interesting. And, how much constant temperature can you obtain? Is it good enough for the plants to be ok during your really cold winters?
Passive solar greenhouse nearing completion.
Penn Parmenter. Well, this is my favourite part – We have two different greenhouses, and one of them we use less water in and so it gets a little cooler in the winter, so I grow cooler plants in the winter in that one, but the warmer greenhouse, that has an optimum amount of water in it, it can grow tomatoes year round, and that is the holy grail of the Rockies, the tomato.
Murray Hallam. I reckon. That is fantastic because in the extremely cold climate that you have in some parts of North America, you know to be able to grow tomatoes and that kind of thing year round is just fantastic.
Penn Parmenter. It is. These greenhouses are proving out more than we even thought they would, so it has been fantastic.
Murray Hallam. Wow. And the interesting thing about it I think, if I understand you correctly, is there’s nothing all that high tech about this. We’re not, we haven’t got any fancy pumps, or gas heaters or anything like that have we?
Cord Parmenter. No, in fact it’s mostly very simple passive solar concepts, you know, this is old talk technology. It’s all about balancing the bringing in of the heat and the storing of the heat. Which is not to say that you can’t use some active solar to increase the effectiveness of it, we’ve just been very happy with the results of the regular passive solar and just how well it works just on its own. We haven’t had a need really to go beyond that because we can grow year round without a lot of expensive systems you know. Once the basic structure’s in place it works really well.
Murray Hallam. So tell me this, are you going to be able to give people instructions at the course sufficient for them to be able to go ahead and build their own greenhouse, or is it more complicated than that?
Penn Parmenter. Great question, because that is what our class is all about. It’s empowering people to do this themselves. We teach them the formula, there’s a ratio between glazing, insulation and water. And we also teach them that they can salvage much of the materials, or they can buy them all new, or they can do a combination and therefore they can keep their costs down and the whole thing just works great that way, whether you want to buy it new, or salvage I mean.
Murray Hallam. That’s the good thing about Aquaponics I think, as we move into a new age I believe, where oil is going to go up so much in price that people are going to have to grow a lot of their own food themselves or locally, to be able to obtain it locally, and this is just an amazing thing to have a greenhouse that is this efficient I think, and it’s exciting isn’t it because this kind of knowledge is just so much needed, don’t you think?
Cord Parmenter. Absolutely, um, it’s really simple technology and it’s available to everyone and that is what we love about it. Because of its simplicity it can get as complicated as you want to. You could get really scientific about designing these greenhouses, but we found when we made our very first greenhouse we had read a book about it and we had actually loaned the book out and were unable to get it back, and so when I actually built that first greenhouse I did a lot of guesswork and there were some things I got wrong, but you know it worked so well even on that. Later we got the book back and we reacquired the book and we were able to see where we had gone wrong and improve upon it. It’s a very forgiving technology too, it’s very simple and yet you can improve it by using a lot of common sense. I find the more that I think about the designs and the more I build the better my designs get. I’ve had such great success, right from the beginning, so I am starting from a really great place and have always been just improving on that and to me that’s very exciting . In fact I have a lot of new ideas as far as venting, cooling. As we have said before we are in a cool climate that gets very cool at night and it can get very warm in the day. Other climates may be warmer and not cool off as much at night, so I have some ideas about that. I am really looking forward to exploring some of these ideas and also it’s very satisfying to me to be able to share this with other people Murray Hallam . That’s fantastic thanks for that. Just to finish off, there is another thing you’re going to be doing there and I think we will have to talk about that in another podcast; but, aren’t you people into seed saving? Do I understand that is another one of the things you do?
Penn Parmenter. We do, we’re really excited about this because this is something gardeners have dropped here in America since world war two. Seed saving should be a part of everybody’s garden system and this is putting seed saving back in the gardener’s hands.
Murray Hallam. Fantastic. I just wonder, how you’re going to fit all this into one day, that’s what I’m beginning to wonder, because it’s going to be an intense day when you’re training for this, and I’m telling you, I’m going to be there with ears all open. I ‘m really interested in the greenhouse and I am very, very interested in the seed saving as well. But look, that’s it for now. We’ll get together again and we will do another podcast shortly. Thanks for talking to me today.
Penn Parmenter. Thank you Murray Cord Parmenter. Thank you.
Grid Power is very convenient for powering our every need including Aquaponics, but how reliable and affordable will it be into the future?
Grid power is very convenient.
It is the desire of almost every Aquaponics operator to ultimately run their system independently of the mains power grid. Just how reliable and affordable will mains power be into the future is the question on my mind. Now that I have well established Aquaponics systems, getting off the mains grid power system is just another step in the journey towards self sufficiency. I have been dreaming about this since I don’t know when. Just where to start and at what level? As one quickly discovers, it can become an expensive exercise.
The mains power grid is just so convenient, plug the pump and aerator in, switch on and that is all there is to do. So why take on such a project?
Here are a few of my reasons,
1. Sick of pump difficulties. Pumps fail or shut down for a number of reasons and many (but not all) of the reasons will be eliminated when going “off grid”
2. Mains power grid outages due to storms, car crashes, mains power grid system maintenance, or for a variety of other reasons.
3. Off grid will be the ultimate backup system.
4. Sick of safety switches tripping out. Submersible “pond” type pumps often, over time develop earth leakage problems which will cause the safety switch (earth leakage) to shut the pump down.
5. Power bills going up and up. The cost of mains electricity has risen by more than 35% in the last 18 months and is tipped to double in the next 12 months or so. Some States of Australia are tipped to go even higher
6. I just want to be more independent – self reliant and get off the grid eventually – a.s.a.p.
As I see it there are different levels of power independence.
1. Grid connected solar panels.This arrangement will supplement the running cost of
Grid connect Solar Panels on your home are a good first-step.
your Aquaponics system. It will not provide any back up ability because if the mains power grid goes down then you have no power from the solar panels. A small battery back up system triggered by a Power Fail Switch is an absolute must in this instance. This is possibly the best first step for most home based Aquaponics systems. It gives you a tangible benefit immediately both for your home and your Aquaponics system.
2. A stand alone solar panel with a battery of sufficient capacity to run your system on a bright sunny day and at night your pump/s are switched off so that only an aerator runs from the battery. A stand by generator set would be necessary in the case of prolonged inclement weather or an auto switching device to switch to mains power once the solar panels stop delivering sufficient power to the battery.
3. Solar array and battery bank of sufficient size to support your Aquaponics system round the clock and for several days in the event of inclement weather. To be totally independent of the grid power a suitable generator set would be needed with auto start once the battery voltage dropped to a pre set level.
A couple of years ago I installed a solar grid connected solar system on my house roof. It is only one kilowatt which I have discovered is just nowhere enough for the average household to make a noticeable difference. It works just fine and it does help, but is not enough to completely offset my household power requirements.
I really want to be completely independent of the power grid system both at home and in the workshop / Aquaponics garden area. I am aiming for a large solar array with a substantial battery bank and a auto switching diesel generator set. Ultimately, I will also fit into the system some wind generated power. I have figured that I can move towards this goal step by step as funds and time allow. A really well functioning stand alone solar system can be built piece by piece with proper planning.
My Aquaponics system battery bank. Each battery is 2 volt x 167 AH.
My project has had a kick start with the acquisition of a decent battery bank courtesy of a client who was moving house and upgrading his “off grid” system. The money I paid him for the batteries was so little that it can only be categorised as a gift. Thanks mate !!!!
I have since discovered the shortcomings of a large battery bank connected to a inverter. Most , if not all inverters are set to cut out/switch off when the battery voltage drops to 10 volts. Usually there is a warning buzzer at 10.5 volts. This is done to protect the battery bank from discharging to far and thereby damaging the batteries.
This governs the the length of time your pump/s can run during the night or when there is a succession of very low light days such as during heavy rain. The load on my battery bank is a total usage via the inverter of 420 watts at 240 volts. (7 pumps at 60 watts each).
I have found by observation that this usage will run the battery voltage down to 10 volts in around 7 hours at which point my inverter switches all the pumps off.
Not very long really. It is therefore not good for me to run my systems, at this time, off my battery bank, charged only by solar panels during the day. There is not enough battery storage to see it through the night until charging from the panels begins again shortly after sun-up.
The energy from the sun needs to be utilised in another way to store up energy for use during the night.
Right now I am using my battery bank strictly as a backup system. There is only a fan and couple of aerators running via the inverter. I have rewired it to a 24 volt system and have run power from the battery bank at 24 volts DC to all the fish tanks. Each group of tanks (3 groups) has it’s own Power Fail Switch that will switch on a 24 volt x 500 gph pump in each fish tank if the mains goes off at any time. All 7 pumps draw only 1 amp each , so a total load of 7 amps. This will run for around 72 hours before the battery bank voltage drops to 10 volts.
For future posts.
Pump failure not related to power outage. How to take care of that possibility.
How can I best market my premium Aquaponically grown produce?
How can I be sure I will be able to market my produce and make my Aquaponics business profitable? Why do I need a website . Do I really have to go to all that trouble, after all I am just going to be growing some vegetables .
These are some of the areas explored by Murray Hallam and Sylvia Bernstein in a recent conversation about the Green Acres Farm training course coming up in April at Gina’s farm, Florida.
Listen to the Podcast .
Transcript. Hello, I’m Murray Hallam from Practical Aquaponics, and talking today to Sylvia Bernstein from The Aquaponic Source. Hi Sylvia, how are you?
Sylvia Bernstein. Hey Murray, I’m doing great Murray, and how are you?
Murray Hallam. Fantastic, Sylvia, I just wanted to talk to you about this training that is coming up in Florida in April. I am getting really excited about it because I am coming over there with you to Gina’s place and I just wanted to ask you a few questions about what you’re doing there. I notice that your section of it’s going to be, a lot of it’s going to be about “Marketing” and “How do we sell the product that we grow” and, I was just wondering if you could tell me a bit, in a broad way, about what you’re going to be teaching.
Sylvia Bernstein. You bet Murray; So my emphasis is on really, taking the produce that we all know how to grow, and that you and Gina are going to take the class through how to grow optimally, and now we‘ve got to get it into the hands of our customers and we need to make the most money possible doing it …you know there is nothing wrong with making money and the way that your farm, (should you sign up for this class), the way that your farm is going to become successful and profitable, is for getting the most out of the produce that you’re going to work so hard to create, to grow. So, my whole emphasis is on the business side of Aquaponic farming.
Murray Hallam. You know what Sylvia, I think that’s probably the most important side, because if the business doesn’t sell their product in a sensible way, then you can grow the finest lettuce or tomatoes under the sun, but if you can’t sell them for a good price it’s a waste of time isn’t it?
Sylvia Bernstein. Well, the bottom line is, you can think about lettuce and tomatoes as a commodity, right, you can think about it in terms of – it’s just a head of lettuce, just like, I can just run down to the grocery store and pick up – or we can think about it as something that has been really specially raised organically and in an incredibly sustainable way by a local farmer, and this is the farmer, and this is their family, and this is how they’re growing food for your family and make that connection… and that connection is going to take what would otherwise be a commodity and really make it a valuable product.
Murray Hallam. It’s fantastic isn’t it? I really see that’s where it’s got to go really, because there are so many people out there today that want clean chemical free food don’t they? They are sick of buying the supermarket rubbish. Look, I noticed in the list of subject matter you’ve got listed down there “Why do I need a website”. Now, why do you think we need a website?
Sylvia Bernstein. You know, the reality today is that we connect to each other in many ways through the internet. If somebody is going to find you, chances are they’re going to do it through the internet. Even if they go, let’s take the scenario, they go to the farmers market and they see you there at your table, and they think “wow, Aquaponics, what’s that? Maybe I want to learn more about these people” .They’re going to go home and they’re going to look for you on the internet.
So the internet has really become the common store front for all of us, and your website is very much the front door. It’s your business on line, and that is where people get an impression of you, and so, their impression is either going to be “ooh” or “these people don’t know what they’re doing” or “they sell too hard” or “they’re very amateurish. Gosh, I’m not sure that I want to trust them with my food “, which is a pretty important thing…..Or, you’re going to get the impression that these are people that I can really relate to and that I want to do business with them. I want to really support them as local farmers. And the difference between website number one and website number two can really be some very minor differences, and we’re going to go into some of that in this class.
Murray Hallam. Sylvia, I can really relate to what you’re saying there because I know I do that, I tend to look at the website, you know, get the internet up when I’m looking for anything at all, even if I am about to go down the road to the Mall, I tend to look up the internet first, to get an idea of what I want…So true.
Sylvia Bernstein. You bet, and God forbid you can’t find them on the internet.
Murray Hallam. I think “What’s going on here?”
Sylvia Bernstein. Exactly; “What’s going on here? These people aren’t real. You know, they must be just slack, or whatever.” But all sorts of bad things happen!!! So, it’s very important. You know, it’s funny to think, that even as a farmer, you really do need to have a good internet presence that represents who you really are.
Murray Hallam. So Gina has got a good website I notice…Look, there is something else on the list I notice you have got there….SEO Basics. What in the world is SEO basics?
Sylvia Bernstein. Well, it’s one of those TLA’s or three letter acronyms. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation”. So, it is essentially where you come up in Google or Bing or whatever search engine is out there, when somebody types in key words, into the search bar, where they might be looking for you. So let’s say that you have a farm in Kansas City Missouri, and you are growing aquaponically, and you specialise in Heirloom Tomatoes. You want to make sure that if somebody in Kansas City, types in “Heirloom Tomatoes Kansas City”, that you are going to come up on the first page of those results, because over 80% of the websites that will actually be clicked on, based on that search, are going to be the ones on that first page. So being on the first page for the searches that are critical to you, is extremely important. You can have the best website in the world, but if you can’t be found, it doesn’t matter. So that is what SEO is about.
Murray Hallam. That is so true, that’s good. I’m going to be listening very carefully to that part I can tell you. Now just stepping back a little bit, we were talking earlier about the need to have a website and selling our produce. What about pricing theory? How are we going to get more money for this produce, because my idea is that if this is a premium product,( which it is)…We are growing a premium product and how do we make sure we get a premium price for it?
Sylvia Bernstein Well, and I’m going to be going into this quite a bit in the class, so I won’t divulge the secrets too much now, but I will tell you that we will be dissecting , “what does that mean to be a premium product, and how do you know how to price within being a premium product? Again it gets back to, “you’re not a commodity”. This is not about looking at every other head of lettuce that is being sold around you. How do you get into channels, meaning, how do you get into farmer’s markets, or restaurants, or places where you can distribute or sell your product, where they truly appreciate the premium nature of what you’re selling. You can have the best, most premium product in the world out there, and if you’re just selling it to a produce distributor, they’re not going to care. They’re going to look at you and say “What’s the price?”
Murray Hallam. It’s just another lettuce.
Sylvia Bernstein. It’s just another lettuce…exactly! They don’t have buyers that are really worried about that premium nature. Now you take it to all the way to the other end of the spectrum and where you’re selling directly to the consumer. The consumer cares a whole lot about that lettuce because they’re about to eat it. So it is about the quality of the lettuce. It’s about how it was raised, it’s about the people who raised it, it’s about the sustainability of the techniques that were used to raise it, you know. Did it harm the earth in the process, and all of those are things that can be bundled into the premium-ness of your head of lettuce.,
Murray Hallam. Fantastic; hey listen, when we were over at Gina’s farm back in September, I was talking to her and she sells to restaurants doesn’t she, and hasn’t she got something called a “buying club”?
Sylvia Bernstein. She does, yes.
Murray Hallam. Are you going to be covering that and how that can be done and how that can be formulated?
Sylvia Bernstein. I am, and definitely in partnership with Gina because, she is the uh, queen or the goddess of the buying club. Boy, I am so impressed with what she does with her buying club. It’s just incredible. She has gotten together with other local farms, local organic farms in her community, and she has become the defacto organic distribution centre for her area. People, customers, end customers, are actually buying baskets of produce and every week they are able to say what they want in their basket and those get delivered. So Gina, you know, she makes a nice profit on this and so, the key to that is that she very much has her ear to the ground on what her market is looking for. And that is one of the keys to making money as a farmer, is really understanding your market and what they are looking for, and that is what Gina does so well.
Murray Hallam. Fantastic.Anyway we better cut this off now I guess and speak again a bit later on Sylvia, but I just want to end cap for people, that we are going to be running this training program at Gina’s farm in Florida in April 21 – 24. We will be having two sessions 21 – 24 and 26 – 29 and Sylvia, you might like to tell them the address where they can go to see all the details.
Sylvia Bernstein. You bet. Actually Murray, any one of our websites has the details, yours at www.practicalaquaponics.com. If you go into Gina’s at http://www.greenacreorganics.biz and mine at www.Aquaponicstore.com is actually where the registrations are taking place, and that is at the Aquaponics store. If you look on the left side there are categories of different products, go all the way towards the bottom where it says “Workshops and Classes”…..and if you just hit that and you will see it.
Murray Hallam. Fantastic. Thanks Sylvia.
Sylvia Bernstein. Thanks so much Murray. It was fun!
Gina Cavaliero is expanding her 1,000 square foot floating raft system to cater for demand
Gina Cavaliero of Green Acre Organics who is expanding her system from a 1000 square foot DWC “floating raft” system to a mix of NFT and Media Bed systems to take advantage of different plants and their growing requirements.
Listen to the Podcast.
Transcript
Ecofilms: Today, small scale commercial Aquaponics system. Can you make any money from them? We speak with Gina Cavaliero from Green Acre Organics and Murray Hallam. Gina, tell us about your system. You’ve got one system already established. A 1000 square foot floating raft system and you’re building and expanding your system. Tell us a bit about that?
Gina Cavaliero: Sure. We started out with a 1,000 square foot DWC (Deep Water Culture) raft type system and we just expanded it to include an additional 1024 square feet. So we’re just right at 2000 square feet of DWC growth space. Its still being powered by the same amount of fish density fish space so we didn’t have to add on anything additionally to our tank area – but just more grow beds.
Murray Hallam: That’s just great Gina, isn’t it.
Gina Cavaliero: It is. We’re looking at trying to optimize how much we can grow with as little bit of fish as possible.
Murray Hallam: Why have you got that approach Gina about keeping the fish at a low density?
Gina Cavaliero: Well the reason is we didn’t really start out with that intention. We thought we would have a better market for our fish products. But what we found is that it’s just not a really competitive type of product – the tilapia here, because they can get it cheap elsewhere. It comes in imported at ridiculous per pound prices. Also for the fact that we don’t process (the fish) We would have to provide our restaurants and chefs is a whole fish on ice. They love the flavor. They love the texture. They didn’t like the labor and the comparison of getting a few servings out of a tilapia as opposed to fifteen out of a grouper of salmon. So it just wasn’t cost effective enough for them.
So what that meant to us is that we had to look at our fish as just our fertilizer generator. They are part of the cost of growing our produce. So we want to minimize how many we have so we have the least amount of overhead to raise and rear them and we can produce as much product as possible.
Murray Hallam: Of course you want to do that with fish because Aquaponics is an ecosystem. You’re dealing with a non-chemical growing method.
Gina Cavaliero: Absolutely. We get everything we need out of the fertilizer, out of the bacterial conversion that occurs as a result of the fish and the ecosystem. So we don’t need to do anything else other than keep those fish happy, keep them fed and they do what they need for us.
Ecofilms: Gina, a lot of people have problems with the word “commercial.” You are selling your produce. How big do you have to be before you would classify an Aquaponics operation to be commercial?
Gina Cavaliero: That’s a great question Frank. In my opinion I think if you’re producing a product and selling it, you’re essentially commercial. You’re putting a product out for sale. So we have this concept of mega-farms which is pretty much what’s dominating the landscape of agriculture these days. That’s kind of far removed from what in my opinion we need. We need small family sized farms where we can really concentrate on delivering to the community. Because that’s what people are desiring. They don’t want this commercialized, processed product. They want to know their farmer. They’d like to have that relationship and knowing their farmer and knowing their food. There’s so much security and sense of comfort that they receive from that. So, you know, you can start out as a very small sized farm and go to your farmers market and sell to your community, your neighbors. In my opinion that’s commercial. Your selling what you are doing.
Ecofilms: But is it viable?
Gina Cavaliero: It is definitely viable depending upon size. Depending upon how much one needs to generate. I get that question a lot. Can I make a living off it? Well I can’t answer that because I don’t know what each individual needs to make a living. That’s a variable number. Can it support two people? I believe so. I think if you have the land, the space to do it. Its definitely viable. I think if you have to incorporate any kind of additional mortgage or lease – I think it will definitely be more challenging. I don’t think its impossible, but I think it escalates you into a larger category where you are looking at paid labor. Ideally what we’re trying to do is to do this with two people. Not to have that addition of paid labor.
Murray Hallam: That applies to any business though really. Any small business that you run, once you start employing people and taking out leases on vehicles or equipment or whatever. It’s the same. Its no different to any other business.
Hey Gina, I’m getting excited about April. I’ll be over at your place in April and for me that’s a bit of a long trip across the big wide ocean but I’m just looking forward to getting over there because you are running a training program. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?
Gina Cavaliero: Sure. We’re really excited about it too. We can’t wait to have you back over here to our side of the pond. What we’re doing is a four day intensive course and we teach everything. Its not just the nuts and bolts. It’s the pen and paper too. We’re going to cover business aspects. SEO management. Why would a farm need a website? Things as intricate as that. As well as managing day to day operations. How to construct a system. How to manage the system. Dealing with fish, planting, harvesting. You name it. Everything you need to do to replicate what we do – we’re going to teach.
Murray Hallam: Fantastic.
Ecofilms: And Murray what’s your involvement in the course? What will you be teaching?
Murray Hallam: I will be talking about media grow beds. That kind of thing, more of the hands on practical kind of stuff. That’s what Gina has asked me to do so I’ll be excited about doing that and of course to meet a lot of my USA friends. But look there’s another thing that’s going on there, that I’m excited to see and listen to and that is Penn and Cord Parmenter are coming down. Can you tell me a bit about that please?
Gina Cavaliero: Yes. We’re excited about the addition of a one day workshop that is in between the four day courses that we’re running simultaneously. Penn and Cord are going to teach their practical application of a passive solar greenhouse. What these folks have done is enable themselves to grow year round at 8,000 feet in Colorado. Incredibly cold non forgiving environment and they grow year round. So what they’re going to do is teach folks how to replicate their green house. A passive solar design. They are also going to do a segment on seed-saving. Its so relevant to what we need here. The vast majority of growers in the US really have to deal with inclement weather and cold temps. We actually had an experience with really bad freezing temps for a prolonged period of time and a passive solar greenhouse would have done wonders for us.
Murray Hallam: Where I live in south east Queensland, we’ve got a fairly good climate. Our worst winter day is a frost that’s just freezing for a couple of hours and that’s it. I’m frequently asked about growing Aquaponics in inclement or cold environments. So that’s really interesting because going back to what you said earlier about the farms you see for the future being small family and mom and dad kind of operations, in selling their stuff locally, its really important for people to be able to grow Aquaponics anywhere. As you say, cold weather climates make it challenging. Imagine if you had to build a greenhouse and you had to have the gas fitted and the big electricity bill and on and on it would go. That’s why I’m so interested in what Penn and Cord have to say. Its going to be really interesting.
Gina Cavaliero: I agree. I’m excited by it. Our partner in this Sylvia Bernstein has actually taken Penn and Cords class and is quite familiar in what they do. So for me its going to be a treat to sit in on this workshop as well.
Ecofilms: Gina just before we finish up, your expanding your Aquaponics system. Can you tell us in which direction you’re going? You’re making a demonstration Aquaponics site that covers all the different aspects. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Gina Cavaliero: Yes. We started out as deep water culture. Raft type. And that is absolutely the prevalent type of growing system for commercial. That’s what’s taught elsewhere with good reason. It has its pluses for commercial type growing. What we discovered doing this for some time is that we really needed to diversify our crops and we needed to optimize where those crops grew. We can get some great growth out of herbs for instance in our DWC. But what we found is that they take up quite a bit of space over a long period of time. When in that same bit of space we could have turned over lettuce perhaps three to four times in the same time span and generated quite a bit more money. We want to take those herbs and put them in a more conducive growing environment which for them means a NFT system. So what we’re doing, we’re tieing in NFT, media, vertical all in together with our DWC. So we can take different crops, put them in the best place where they’ll grow most optimally. Perhaps that means not taking up space. Perhaps that means being mobile in a DWC system and we’ll have a great example of different systems and how you can incorporate those systems together.
Murray Hallam: Actually Gina you’ve also found with supplying your chefs and customers that they don’t want just lettuce every week. They want other things.
Gina Cavaliero: They want anything and everything. I can probably say we have still not satisfied our chefs. They are ravenous for anything. They want different things. They want unique items. They want us to grow certain things specifically for them so they can have something that no one else has. They love our lettuce products. We hear all the time how its so much better than anything else. Its sweeter. Its more tender. The colours are more vibrant. They love it. They want more of it. They want different things.
Ecofilms: Wilting. I’ve heard stories of people having problems selling their produce because once they pick it they take it out of water and the plant just flops over and wilts. Do you have that problem?
Gina Cavaliero: That is usually indicative of the time that you are harvesting. We harvest specifically lettuce and greens very early before daylight. It has a lot to do with the stomata opening and how it affects the plant as well as temperature which is very relevant for harvesting. So there are some keys and tips of the trade so to speak that we are going to share in our training so people will not have that issue.
Ecofilms: Fantastic. I wanted to ask you what plants are the most profitable but maybe we should keep that for the course.
Gina Cavaliero: (laughing)Yeah we can keep that for the course, but its really market specific. I stay away from making statements about what might be really great here might not be really great in Louisiana or California or Colorado. Research your market. Become very familiar with it. Know who your clientele is.
Ecofilms: So how do people find out? What days are the courses? You got two groups, April 21-24 as well as April 26-29. Why are there two sessions?
Gina Cavaliero: We decided to go with two sessions because we anticipated a really good response. We know that we are offering something that really is not being offered elsewhere like some of the other commercial trainings. There’s something unique about ours. It involves the fact that we’ve been doing this. We do it everyday. We have some incredible industry leaders like Murray and Sylvia joining us. And its comprehensive. There’s everything you need to know.
Ecofilms: Where do you book it? Where do you sign up?
Gina Cavaliero: You can go to my website which is www.greenacreorganics.biz I always tell people there is an “s” on organics, not on “acre”. It will link you though to the registration page. All the information you need to know is right there at our website.
SEE DETAILS OF GINA’s AQUAPONICS FARM TRAINING HERE.
Our approach is that Aquaponics is a balanced ecosystem…. through a family farm. Ordinary people can do it. You do not need a million dollars, or highly mechanized components to grow your own food for yourself and your community.
