Long term self sustaining food and water plans?

[lasinvegas]

A small greenhouse with an aquaculture set up would be the way to go in the mtns in my opinion. My experience with aquaculture has shown a huge growth jump over plants grown in other manners. Your fertilizer is self replacing and you get the added benefit of meat.

As far as growing grains go, i'm not sure you could grow enough to make a loaf of bread reliably. I could be wrong, but it might be worth a try from someone already living in the mtns to see what they come up with. Be worth knowing before you actually had to grow them.

As far as livestock, I am a big fan of goats. They can feed and thrive in areas that a lot of other livestock would never thrive in. Plus you can get milk and make cheese from them. I am a big fan of ducks over chickens for eggs. We have ducks now and have averaged over 300 eggs each a year from our girls.

[Irving]

When you say "aquaculture" are you referring to having a tank with fish in it, with plants growing on top of the water? I recently heard something about this on NPR. I guess the fish poop fertilizes the plants. Supposedly, getting the balance just right is kind of a big deal. There must be more to this though, because I know that all the fish I have would eat any plant I tried to grow.

[lasinvegas]

There are several ways to do the aquaculture thing as well as several different fish and crayfish you can grow.

Basic system description-

Tank for the fish and a tank for the growing medium and plants. That is all there is to it. You pump the water from the fish tank into the second tank which is usually mounted higher than the fish tank. Once the water reaches a set height in the plant tank it will activate the siphon and drain back to the bottom tank. This allows the roots to get flooded with the nutrient rich water from the fish tank as well as filter the water for the fish. You can also grow things like lettuce in rafts on top of the fish tank. The rafts are nothing more than styrofoam with holes for the lettuce roots that float on top of the water and you harvest as needed.

It gets a lot more technical than this, but I didn't want to get too into it. I guess I could start a thread on it if there was enough interest.

[Irving]

That's a great explanation, thanks. That really is a pretty viable source of both meat and veggies. I wonder what kind of numbers you could pull though. Lets say that you have a fish tank the size of an above ground pool, and a veggie tank of equal size. Is that going to be able to get you enough food to feed a family for a year and remain sustainable, or will it be more for having an excellent supplement for your other stores?

[lasinvegas]

I got to tour a facility that had 4- 1500 gallon tanks set up with a 400 gallon table. The table was basically a 20ft long trough that had the water pump on one end and a matching tank behind it with the plants. They pumped from one end and the water came back in on the other so it kept a nice flow of nutrients going. The table had redclaw crayfish and had lettuce rafts over the full length. The 1500 gallon tanks were actually holes in the ground with pond liners. The whole set up was in a 30ftx20ft greenhouse.

They produced roughly 200lbs of crayfish, 2000lbs of tilapia and 2000lbs of yellow perch a year on the meat side. The production rates on the veggies were off the chart as well. I don't remember all of the numbers, but they were producing-
basil
peppers
tomatos
zuchini
lettuce
spinach
cabbage
and many more herbs and veggies I can't remember off the top of my head.

They were producing on a scale that was making money to cover the operation selling to local restaurants. In my mind not too bad for an operation housed in 600 sqft. They chose the inground route because it was cheaper to keep the water heated in the winter and it in turn kept the greenhouse heated.

[Irving]

Wow, those are great numbers. The news piece on NPR was talking about restaurants haven't their own set-ups exactly like that, so that the customers could always know exactly what kind of fish they were getting and where it came from.

[lasinvegas]

I have been working on designing a smaller furniture quality set up that I can market that will use a regular display tank like most people have and grow kitchen herbs or small veggies in the kitchen or living room. No reason you can't use goldfish or cichlids to grow kitchen herbs for your own kitchen.

I would even recommend a smaller design like this as a cheap way to get your feet wet.

[J Tactical Firearms]

There are several ways to do the aquaculture thing as well as several different fish and crayfish you can grow.

It gets a lot more technical than this, but I didn't want to get too into it. I guess I could start a thread on it if there was enough interest.

I saw a video on this once and was thinking this was the best idea. I would be interested in reading more info on the subject. If its sustainable long term then it could be a good hobby to learn if you ever need to provide meat and veggies for yourself.

[rocktot]

The question I have is is it practical to grow veggies in a standard greenhouse (simple construction) at 7000 ft? All year round, in raised beds or something.

[J Tactical Firearms]

Couldn't a hand pump work for your water well if you couldn,t keep a solar system going long term? You remember the old metal hand pumps you see on farms?