The Weekend is near and I Need the Rest

This has been a huge week that everyone here in South East Queensland will be glad to put to bed as soon as we can. There is so much heartache and in some areas the smell is sickening. But I need to not dwell on this and deal with what is at hand.

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This is unbelievable news about aquaponics. Here is the system for anyone: poor and rich alike.
Saves you your quality of life, your time, your resources, and many more.
Enter aquaponics, the whole of food gardening which has a small but growing group of followers, not least because its advantages seem almost too good for being true. An aquaponics installation requires no soil, scant water (two-ten percent of what’s employed in usual vegetable garden), a modest financial outlay and minimal maintenance. There’s no coping with pesticides, and also the system is sustainable and straightforward to set up. For gardeners alert to..... 

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How Aquaponics Changes the Game
- Waist-high aquaponic gardening eliminates weeds, back strain and animal access to your garden.
- Reuse resources currently considered “waste”. There is no more toxic run-off from either hydroponics or aquaculture.
- Uses only 1/10th of the water of soil-based gardening, and even less water than recirculating aquaculture.
- Watering is integral to the system. You can’t under-water or over-water.
- Fertilizing is also integral to the system. You can’t over-fertilize or under-fertilize.
- Gardening chores are cut down dramatically or eliminated. The aquaponic grower only does 

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Aquaponics system is the most sustainable food production system in our world today. Aquaponics in a dynamic, natural, pond-type eco-system, produces both fish and organic vegetables; thus producing 2 streams of income. Aquaponics systems provide controlled environment where aquaculture (fish breeding/growing) and hydroponics (soil less plant growing) is integrated together in a symbiotic habitat. It is composed of a water re-circulating environment where the fish and plants live symbiotically. Both light and temperature are carefully controlled in an aquaponic system....

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Send in the clones: Popular scion exchange could produce hundreds of fruit trees

By nadia drake

Posted: 01/08/2011 01:30:17 AM PST

APTOS -- Some of the tastiest fruits cant be bought. Not because theyre too expensive, but because they dont exist in stores. However, they can be grown -- cloned, actually -- by the average backyard gardener.
On Jan. 16, the Monterey Bay chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers will host a scion exchange, where cuttings from fruit trees -- called scions -- will be available to buy and graft onto root stocks. There also will be a short grafting workshop, and custom trees can be created on the spot.
Fusing a scion to a root stock produces a clone of the scions donor tree, with the same tasty fruit -- like, for example, the funny-looking, scrumptious Allens Everlasting apple, which is not available at the neighborhood Safeway...

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By Catherine Porter Columnist

CROIX-DES-BOUQUETS, HAITI—By the time he was 4, Carlos Desir’s parents had died. His uncle and aunt, who adopted him, said only that they fell ill.
Then, late on the afternoon of Jan. 12, the earthquake that cleaved Port-au-Prince brought down his second home. His aunt, uncle and three cousins were crushed to death.
Next week marks the anniversary of the earthquake and, for 13-year-old Carlos, better times with families Nos. 3 and 4. The third is a group of orphaned and abandoned kids in an idyllic new children’s home on the city’s edge. The fourth — and most unlikely of all his families — is that of Air Canada’s chief operating officer, Duncan Dee, two plane rides away in Ottawa....

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Why is there very little take up of Aquaponics in the commercial arena around the world? Is it lack of knowledge, too new and unknown or just too hard to make it work profitably?

Its not to do with making it work properly; it has been put to bed by now that this technology works and works well. My work at University and in New Zealand shows categorically that you can match, and even sometimes better, hydroponic plant growth rates and the harvest quality of the plants. Its more about whether it is financially viable or not. All commercial entities need to...

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Aquaponics update. Added a strawberry tube to the big aquaponics system and a new 200L bed to the small greenhouse system. Both systems running well with plant growth that is amazing. A few pics. Posted by Richard at 10:15 AM ...

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What kind of aquaponics supplies do you need to get started?....Trying to find out what kind of Aquaponics Supplies you need in order to make your very first aquaponics garden?  Im going to go over a few of the supplies that are needed below, and I will help you to get started by recommending a step by step guide that will allow you to start gardening with aquaponics by tomorrow.  I hope this article helps, lets get started below...

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I want to know if aquaponics can be made into a profitable business model to replace or change "agrabusiness". I am for the decentralization of food, but will aquaponics be compatible with our modern world. Or would it be better suited towards home use...

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This is a short one for the weekend. Ill try to make it up to you on Monday.

Please take care and Be Safe

OZZIE  

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Not so near distant future

I got up today and realized my stomach was gurgling.  I was still compelled to go hang out with old friends today till...I met up with the magical potty closet.  My friends dont mind and I have no shame but I think it is pretty rude to go and blow up someones bathroom when I knew I wasnt feeling good before I came.  This may seem irrelevant but everywhere I go for advice on starting up my little farming project, I hear "blah blah blah do it rain or shine, sick or well."  I understand where theyre coming from and I know the consequences.  Just making sure everyone else reading knows as well.  I also thought...what are my future plans besides college and a family?  What comes after?  What will be on this crazy farm I want?

I decided against a cow.  While I could provide milk for my local family and myself, it is just otherwise a bad idea.  My dearest loving boyfriend would likely drink himself sick for number one.  I dont actually drink milk.  It makes my stomach hurt for the most part.  I want a milker just to keep him from drinking my milk (which is usually hemp milk) when he is out and because it does wonders on dry hair.  Yeah you heard me right.  Yes I have used milk in my hair before.  It was wonderful!  The way it shined and bounced...oh it was beautiful.  Besides milk, I also wanted something with meat output.  We do eat quite a bit of beef (although with healthier choices, meat will be severely cut down) but eat much more chicken.  The goat meat will be for the pets.  I am leaning towards pygmies because of their lower meat and milk production.

And yes chickens!  We eat chicken, dogs eat chicken, we eat eggs...where would we be without chickens?  I hear they arent worth the work...(but neither are most things according to the people around me.)  Cows arent worth the work for us because we just dont need that much meat or milk.  But chickens?  Free range organic chickens are a pretty penny.  I have no doubt in my mind that we will be raising a crap ton of these for yums with some supplemental chickens from local co-ops.  Besides the point of growing stuff at home is to be as self sufficient as possible.  With a bunch of new people, there is no way this will happen right off the bat.  I have been leaning towards Rhode Island reds but have taken a look at leghorns as well.  Both are common in this area (along with New Hampshire reds.)

I have greatly considered owning some turkeys but not quite sure.  Where I grew up, turkeys are protected by law and are even more stupid and aggressive than normal.  They think it is ok to run in front of your car (they wont cross the street if it is empty...only in traffic) and think it is ok to kick it on your porch.  If you try to tell them otherwise, the males get all jumpy and fluffy.  They attacked our pets if we took them outside in the morning.  I told my old manager about this one day and the wild turkeys in her area (just a few miles out) were nothing like that.  If anything, theyd adopt your cat or your yard.  Our local feed store says the same thing about pet turkeys.  Apparently I just lived around some psychos or something crazy.  By the way killing them is a $500 fine.  I do hear that non psychotic pet turkeys can be very rewarding, especially around thanks giving.  I havent quite found a breed but am heading towards heritage types.

 

 A horse is also high on the list but I like things to have multiple purpose.  It will probably be for short trails and riding around the area, checking fences along with getting food to everyone.  I have greatly kinda thought about it.  I have settled on either an expensive gypsy, a cheap mustang (probably for later), or a dales pony...which would also be expensive.

And of course a dog that can actually protect the other animals from things like coyotes and cats that can protect our fields from things like reapers bunnies.

 

Of course I have my pets that are simply around for pleasure too.  I havent forgotten my current dogs, nanas dog Beau, and the dog that will be tagging along that dearest loving boyfriend doesnt know about yet.  I also still want that beautiful goldfish or koi pond.  Did I also mention that I want a few maple and oak trees as well as some rose bushes?  I know these arent pets but it is still something to take care of!

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When I was little

Remember when you were little and thought life would always have this or that?  A couple of weeks ago my grandmas fax machine went off.  I forgot to mute the modem and we were blessed with beeee burrrrrruuuup followed by the fax.  Yes her fax machine still handshakes very vocally.  Kinda got me thinking...I never thought life would change so much.

My dad is a computer nerd (I inherited it) and we, for the most part, had DSL at home.  I knew most people didnt however and was pretty used to that handshake...you know that funny sound your modem made right after your computer dialed out.  For those of you that dont know, it went a lot like this

beep...beep...beedeedee burrrrrr badangbadang shhhhhhhhhhhhhh

And many other forms of that.  My grandmother had AOL for a while which made a sort of creepy alien sound and went on with more shhhhhh-ing. Depending on how fast your ISP responded, it would continue or youd connect.  When I was little, I thought dial up (which was just called internet back then) would always dominate the market and only people with nerdy parents or that were extremely rich could get DSL (which was also called internet.  Dial up was considered regular.)  Now Im older and dont have screaming modems, I found out they have a mute button.

When I was really little, I thought nothing would ever replace VHS.  I would always watch my favorite parts over and over again till my tapes would come apart.  Not once did I ever stop to think that these would be replaced by DVDs or that we would be able to stream them online (after all...dial up is slow.)  When DVDs DID get big, I thought this was some pretty sexy technology.  Then came high definition DVDs.  Next thing you know, blu ray is out.

I knew my computer games were on CD (CD...not DVD like they are now) but figured most important things were kept on floppy disks only.  I was so excited one day when my dad bought colorful floppies.  I didnt have much use for them but hey they were cool.  I eventually found out about flash drives.  Of course, those were only for the rich and/or important people!  A little while after, I accepted them and figured that this was it.  Now computer games are on DVD and Im sure they will eventually be on blu ray.

Remember Sony Walkman cassette player?  I never had one but my sister did.  I was so jealous of her cool name brand Walkman!  Of course I was born in 1990, CD players were starting to hit big.  By the time my parents let me have something portable, CD players were battery operated.  My parents/grandparents still called them walkmen but hey I was cooler.  I had a CD player!  Then, mp3 players came out.  I held onto my CD players all the way up till college when my last one finally died.  I had an mp3 player somewhere in high school but it was nowhere near as durable.  I got an iPod, which also died shortly after.  It wasnt my fault...I got a bad batch of nanos that were known for not working.

I found my Razor scooter when I moved out of my moms house...wheels worn down and all.  I also found roller blades that were still in OK condition.

When my cousin got the chicken pox, the entire neighborhood had a sleep over at his house at one time or another.  We all got sick but were back to school in no time. Then they came out with a shot for it.  It is often seen as "child abuse" to send your kids to a pox party.

I thought Saturday morning cartoons were an American tradition.  You can still find them on some stations but it only lasts about 2 ish hours.  I remember ABCs motto..."five hours of summer once a week.  Five hours of summeeerrrrr One Saturday Morning!"  This is pretty much what got me out of bed in the morning.  After those were done, it was outside all...friggin...day.  By the way, I couldnt wait to be in 7th grade so bad so I could be like Pepper Ann and hang out like on The Weekenders.  At the same time I wish my school was like Third Street School and we had cool recess.

When I was really tiny, I truly thought that we would have flying cars by the year 2000.

But then again, I thought that world peace was coming in the near distant future as well.
Oh children.  Were so cute!

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