Thinking of Starting your Own Business

2:07 AM in Aqua, business, of, own, starting, thinking, your

Aquaculture does offer good potential for financial returns, it can be a rewarding business and one you can be be proud of. Like any other idea, your business size and scope has to suit you and your resources, to have the best chance for success. Always do your homework first and plan your business, then work your plan.

Aqua Farming can be undertaken on a full time or part time basis. Many successful individual farmers started farming fish on a part time basis and gradually developed full time commercial scale farms after gaining experience and developing resources. Starting a hobby aqua farm is a great way to gain experience and to determine if aquaculture is indeed a business/career choice you wish to make.

Small scale aquaculture requires considerable less investment than a full commercial operation diminishing your financial risks during the development and learning stages. Unless you have good training, farm management experience and strong cash reserves, look closely at starting small and testing the waters first.

The above is an exert from series of articles offering guidelines for evaluating Aquaculture as a buiness. The full articles can be found here.

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Dont Overthink or Over Engineer Your Systems

5:44 AM in Aqua, dont, engineer, or, over, overthink, systems, your

It is so easy to get carried away with the physics involved in building your aquaponic grow systems that the  simple becomes unduly complex.  Complex is not good. Complex is rarely if ever easy to maintain. Try to avoid complex as much as possible.

If you think effort goes into designing a large system, just try to re-design a large system after all components are in place but not functioning as they should.  Implementing the re-design means that you have re-do all the previous hard work.  Not efficient use of time or energy.  If you and your garden want  to survive, you need to use your time and energy as efficiently as possible.

The following is a great case in point of over designing a system.  When the a frames for NFT (nutrient film technique) tubes were first designed and built for the Together We Stand project, the designer was greatly concerned that because the water was going to flow through 4 tubes before draining that all the nutrients would be absorbed by the plants on the top row and the plants in rows 2 through 4 would be nutrient starved.  So a complex manifold system was created and installed to give equal feed of the nutrient rich water into the top of the a-frame.  Truly a beautiful design as you can see from here.

Since each A-Frame has two sides, there was a manifold for each side of the frame.  Of course, this system over engineered a problem that didnt exist.  See, the nutrient levels at the top tube of an A-Frame are not significantly lower than the bottom tubes unless your system is extremely nutrient deficient. So, this overly complex design solved a problem that didnt exist.  However what it did do was utilize flow tubing that was so small you didnt get good water flow and it clogged constantly. In addition, since each tube was fed individually, it drained individually.  If you think that manifold was something, then check out this drain system

Looks like some kind of octopus, right?  In addition, note the use of clear tubing.  Well it was clear at the start I am sure.  But because the clear tubing allows sunlight to penetrate, algae growth was a constant problem and because of the design, 8 drain tubes needed to be cleaned on a regular basis.  All to solve a nutrient feed problem that doesnt exist!

The answer was to re-plumb the A-frame so that water enters in one location on each side of the frame and then feeds and drains each tube in sequence.  

So that anyone working on the system in the future will understand how it operates, each tube was marked at the feed and drain points and also with arrows indicating water flow.

 Note the use of dark tubing for the inlet feed tubing.  For the jumper lines between the tubes, in a stroke of genius my husband realized that garden hose would work perfectly and is certainly less expensive than other hosing. 

Since there is now only 1 drain for each side of the frame, only 2 drains are necessary.  That means we can slay the octopus and the task associated with keeping the lines clean.

It was a bit of a pain, but now these A-Frames will perform their NFT tasks much more effectively and will require much less effort to maintain. 

As a side note, you will notice in some of the photos that the tubes are marked with letters and numbers.  This is something that was implemented back when this shade house was first built.  It was done to help keep crop and maintenance records.  Even if your garden is small, if you have more than one grow bed, NFT tube system or multiple raft beds I highly recommend that you develop some sort of identification system to make your record keeping much easier.

So how did you spend your week-end?

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Let Your Little Light Shine

12:59 PM in Aqua, let, light, little, shine, your

Spare Parts, a band from the First Unitarian Church in Albuquerque, performed several songs at the Fall Gathering of the New Mexico Interfaith Power & Light on Saturday, Nov. 7. (See video of part of the keynote address by Interfaith Power & Light founder Rev. Canon Sally Bingham). Let Your Little Light Shine was one of the songs this wonderful group shared with participants.The song is very appropriate to recognize some of the people and organizations that received the Sprouts and Seeds awards from NMPIL that afternoon.

 Rev.Canon Sally Bingham poses with Sen Mimi Stewart

Sen. Mimi Stewart was recognized for her leadership in promoting an initiative to extend the residential, commercial, and agricultural tax credit for solar installations in New Mexico."This bill helps more New Mexicans take advantage of a pollution-free energy source that also creates jobs. New Mexico was just ranked in the top ten states for renewable energy job growth by Environmental Entrepreneurs," said the organization Environment New Mexico. The bipartisan initiative was approved by an overwhelming 37-5 vote in the New Mexico State Senate, but Gov. Susana Martinez, without an explanation, chose to use the pocket veto on the measure.  According to the Taos News, Sen. Stewart is considering bringing back the measure during the upcoming session of the legislature, perhaps trying to add a solar power tax credit to the tax incentive bill.

Fr. Christopher McLaren & Gary Gunthorpe, St. Marks

One of our Core Values at St. Mark’s is to be good stewards of the earth’s resources and to move toward a more sustainable future for our congregation, our families and our world. As the people of God in this place we are initiating New Energy @ St. Mark’s Solar Project as one way that we can begin to take practical and visionary steps toward becoming a good steward of God’s creation and an environmentally aware community of faith.  -Fr. Christopher McLaren

St. Marks on the Mesa Episcopal Church received a special recognition for its Solar Power Project, which aims to meet the energy needs of the house of worship with solar power.  The parishioners are investors in the project through a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) that the church has set up to finance the project. The anticipated cost of the solar system is approximately $100,000, which  purchase an installed 30 kW photovoltaic system from New Mexico-based company PPC Solar.

Evelyn Sanchez & Kathy Sanchez, TWU

Environmental Justice has been defined by our community as, “Our Commitment to honor and protect the rights of ourselves, our habitat, and the fair treatment of all living things.”

NMIPL honored Tewa Women United for its consistent strong and collective voice creation care and environmental justice through prayer, inspiration, advocacy and witness  rooted within the spiritual ways of native women. TWU is a collective intertribal womens voice in the Tewa homelands of northern New Mexico.

Through its Environmental Justice Program, TWU aims to engage in local and international dialogue and activism on nuclear non-proliferation, human rights, and the rights of our Mother Earth.  The best way to achieve this aim is to integrate body, mind, and spiritual awareness into environmental justice advocacy, policy change, and community education. Another major goal is to empower Indigenous, women and their families, and people of color’s voices in local, national, and International networks and coalitions in order to build community capacity and leadership development.

Ruth Hoffman

Other individuals, faith communities and organizations honored on Saturday were Immaculate Conception  Catholic Church (Albuquerque), Santa Maria de la Vid Norbertine Community (Albuquerque), Patricia Gallegos of the organization Juntos (Albuquerque), Rev. Nick King (Mennonite Minister in Carlsbad), Ruth Hoffman of the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry (Santa Fe), Robyn Seydel of La Montañita Cooperative (Albuquerque) and Kathy Freeze of Catholic Charities of Central New Mexico (Albuquerque).

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Flours in Your Hair

3:11 PM in Aqua, flours, hair, in, your

Earlier this year, we were having some trouble with our bread loaves, namely, that our bread slices would fall apart.  Were pretty messy eaters, so no one really noticed anyway, but it was still inconvenient for us.  We tried everything we could think of, assuming the problem was altitude-related.  More flour, less flour, adding eggs, longer kneading time, lower fraction of whole wheat, shorter proofing time...nothing worked well.

In a classic case of not doing our homework, we had been using Hungarian High Altitude flour as our bread flour, since were living 5600 feet above sea level. (Thats high altitude, right?)  But apparently, the high-altitude refers to where the wheat was grown, not necessarily that the flour is tuned for baking at high altitudes.  Eventually, we got some specifically high-gluten flour from an Amish grocery store the last time we were home to Wisconsin, and poof! Good bread again.


When we finally checked the specs on our high-altitude flour,  we found it had a measly 3 g protein in a 30 g serving, or ~10% protein.  Most flours that are good for bread are in the 13-16% protein range, so that could have easily been our problem. (Although gluten isnt exactly the same as protein, it is does contribute to the protein content, and the two are usually correlated, at least for wheat flour; more discussion here.)

Back to the Amish store...in our experience, these stores have a huge selection of flours.  Which one is best for bread?  Which ones arent bleached or bromated? The bags just have the brand name and variety, so we cant tell  whats what when were actually in the store.  What we really need is a database of all the flours and their attributes, collected in a table in a readily-accessible place like a blog. Minions! To the spreadsheet!  Other minions! To the internet!

A few hours of searching later, and we know all kinds of things about the Amish store flours.  Note: if your local purveyor of flour has other varieties youre interested in, sources 1 and 6 have brands/varieties that arent included here.  Sources: [1] Dutch Valley Foods. [2] MichiganSPARC. [3] Pizzamaking.com. [4] Mohamed et al. [5] Wheat Montana. [6] King Arther Flour. [7] Package nutrition info. [8] King Arthur Flour Community. (If you have trouble finding links to the specific product specs, we have more specific links in some cases.)

In case you were wondering...bleaching and bromating are chemical processing steps that make flour whiter and better for some applications (including bread).  But bleaching makes flour white by removing carotenoid pigments, usually by reacting them with benzoyl peroxide. Bromating improves dough characteristics by oxidizing some compounds needed to form gluten, usually through reactions with potassium bromate.  While both of these compounds are oxidants, and are (in theory) fully consumed in the flour treating and baking processes (i.e., converted to nontoxic substances), bleaching is unnecessary and removes nutrients, which have to be added back in.  Residual bromates are toxic and suspected carcinogens.  Outside of the U.S., many countries ban bleaching and bromating agents for those (and other, less chemistry-related) reasons (see also here, here, and here).  Usually the ingredients section will list "bleached flour" and/or "postassium bromate" if those processing steps have been included.

So, why do we care if the flours are bleached and bromated? 

[stepping on to soapbox]

Bleaching is primarily an aesthetic step.  While it helps gluten formation somewhat and removes some oils that can go rancid (thereby increasing the flours shelf life), we think that those benefits are more than offset by the nutrient removal that also happens in the process.  Furthermore, the aesthetic benefits happen anyway if the flour is allowed to stand exposed to air (or more specifically, to oxygen).  It doesnt appeal to our line of thinking that food production should be more complicated and less nutritious for primarily aesthetic reasons. 

Bromating, in addition to being unnecessary, might pose some legitimate health concerns, especially in home baking operations where the processes arent perfectly controlled.  If the bread isnt cooked long enough or to a high enough temperature, the bromates dont break down, and we would end up eating them.  While they are generally present in very low amounts, the possibility of consuming bromates in any quantity seems like an unnecessary risk.

Its just flour production--keep it simple!

[falling off of soapbox, hoarse and exhausted]


So, there you go.  Next time were home, well probably be looking for some Wheat Montana or Sir Lancelot flour to make our sandwich bread.

Whats your go-to sandwich bread recipe, and what kind of flour(s) do you use? Let us know in the comments section below!

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