Of Fish, Food And More Food!

WAITSBURG - Imagine a raised vegetable bed the size of a dinner table.

Now picture growing enough greens in this 5' x 5' space to feed a family of four year round. Impossible? Not according to Waitsburg's Mickey and Tawnya Rich- ards. With their partners Ray and Debi Fosnot they have worked since December building their new business, "Lettuce Eat Fish".

As long as you have the right ingredients - fish, fish feed, rocks, water, light and heat - you should be able to meet your leafy needs around the clock, thanks to a new approach to farming called "aquaponics."

"Everybody should be doing this," said Mickey Richards, who is best known around Waitsburg as the "daddy" of Izzy the camel, and for his antler design business. But says he wouldn't mind making his contribution to sustainable agriculture (aside from feeding his family).

Aquaponics, also known as pisciponics, is a plant cultivation method that com- bines aquaculture (raising fish) with hydroponics (growing plants in water) in a closed loop system. In tanks, growers feed the fish, whose effluent fills the water with nutrient-rich nitrogen that is distributed over the vegetable beds where the plants absorb and filter it so the clean liquid can be returned to the fish tanks.

That's exactly the setup visitors to the Richards' barn see. In the converted struc- ture on family property on DeWitt Road near the edge of town, Mickey and Taw- nya are incubating an entire enterprise that will first feed themselves and their two children.

Then, the idea is to replicate aquaponics systems for other households and sell shares in the barn's produc- tion to other families, and possibly local restaurants, in the form of a CSA, or "community-supported agriculture."

"It's all in the testing phase," Tawnya Richards said, as she and Mickey give a tour of their barn-turnedgreen house.

The space has three long beds, roughly 4'x16' filled with pebbles and neatly marked for would-be crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, cauliflower, snap peas, beans, peppers, ci- lantro, and so on. Some plants have already breeched the rocky surface, growing twice as fast as their earth- bound counterparts and are climbing towards the metal grid next to the bed.

The Richards, along with several websites devoted to the trendy new cultivation technique, tout the system's benefits: no dirt; up to ten times as many plants in the same space; no weeding; no soil pests or toxic chemicals; virtually no watering; one- third the energy consump- tion of a conventional gar- den; and a ready source of protein once the fish are big enough to eat. (In the Richards' case, they are tilapia, an African fresh water species).

According to one website, one U.S. farmer manag- es to grow 1 million pounds of food per year on only three acres of land using aquaponics.

The basic concept isn't as cutting-edge as it seems. The Aztec cultivated agricultural islands called chinampas, considered by some as the first use of aquaponics in ag- riculture. Plants were raised on stationary islands in lake shallows and waste materials from canals and surrounding cities were used to irrigate the plants. In South China and Thailand, farmers have a long tradition of growing rice and raising fish together in the paddy fields.

But only the past decade and a half have researchers at North Caroline State University and the University of the Virgin Islands perfected the closed-loop system. And the Edmonton Aquaponics Society in Northern Alberta developed a small-scale prototype version that can be operated by families, small groups and restaurants.

Now it's beginning to catch on in this country, where thousands of smallscale growers are setting up greenhouses in which car- rots mature in a week rather than a month and a half.

The Richards keep their temperatures in the greenhouse up with traditional forms of energy, but they are switching to alternative wind and solar to reduce the barn's utility footprint very soon.

And they want to make the science accessible to future generations in the form of school tours and possibly the participation of Waits- burg's Rural Youth Enrich- ment Services. Several tours have already been given and can be made by appointments only.

"It's a new process Amer- icans are getting into," Mick- ey Richards said. "It changes your whole mindset about growing plants."

For more information, email: info@lettuceeatfish.com or visit www.lettucee- atfish.com.