Washington State Aquaponics

Hey People!

My name is Joe Martino. I am a student at the Evergreen State College and am involved in a project to build a passive solar greenhouse that would house an aquaponics system on campus. My goal is to examine the culture of Washington state food production, the number and state of WA AP projects both public and private, and the economical viability of these systems, and to write an essay on these matters by the end of the quarter. Essentially, I am examining the development of systems, and what would be required to make this method of food production more wide spread. If you would like to know more about myself and the project before contacting me, please feel free to visit our project website, www.foodforgenerations.com.

I look forward to meeting you.

Joe

Hey Joe, I assume you're connected with Jessica Schilke at Evergreen? She's been working on a large aquaponics project on campus - is that the same as the project you're referring to?

Joe Martino wrote:Hey People!

My name is Joe Martino. I am a student at the Evergreen State College and am involved in a project to build a passive solar greenhouse that would house an aquaponics system on campus. My goal is to examine the culture of Washington state food production, the number and state of WA AP projects both public and private, and the economical viability of these systems, and to write an essay on these matters by the end of the quarter. Essentially, I am examining the development of systems, and what would be required to make this method of food production more wide spread. If you would like to know more about myself and the project before contacting me, please feel free to visit our project website, www.foodforgenerations.com.

I look forward to meeting you.

Joe

Yes! I do know Jessica and she has been a huge help in getting our project off the ground. She's actually somewhat of a mentor in my mind. While we do work with each other and plan to share in data collection, construction work on each others sites, etc, these are somewhat different projects. As I'm sure you know, her system has a focus on deep water culture methodologies and she plans to install vertical grow tubes. The team I am working with is more focused on media bed methodologies, and we plan to install a nutrient film technique addition later in the year. How did you meet Jessica? Do you know of any other people I can contact? Thank you for your response, what are you working on now?

Joe Martino wrote:Yes! I do know Jessica and she has been a huge help in getting our project off the ground. She's actually somewhat of a mentor in my mind. While we do work with each other and plan to share in data collection, construction work on each others sites, etc, these are somewhat different projects. As I'm sure you know, her system has a focus on deep water culture methodologies and she plans to install vertical grow tubes. The team I am working with is more focused on media bed methodologies, and we plan to install a nutrient film technique addition later in the year. How did you meet Jessica? Do you know of any other people I can contact? Thank you for your response, what are you working on now?

I know Jessica through someone in my PDC who is friends with her, and have met her and Nick at convergences and Seattle permie events. She's doing some impressive stuff. IIRC, she's focused more on cold water fish options?

My personal projects are urban homesteading related - all are at SeattleHomestead.com. No aquaponics in the near future plans since we have a number of other large projects on our plate first. Will certainly play with it at some point, however.

I know of one person doing aquaponics in West Seattle. They are not permies and while it was great to tour their system, I spotted a large list of things I wouldn't have done in the first place. Typical permaculture basics like only pumping water once and letting it gravity feed through the entire system were ignored, and many pumps were necessary as a result. Simple stuff like that added far too much complexity without any benefit, and could have been avoided with a little more observation and planning. But, I suppose that's why we tour other people's systems first. It's at a private home, not sure if they do tours. I saw it through a local afternoon class that was offered.

I have heard of someone on the Olympic peninsula doing cold water aquaponics - there was a news video interview with him that I can't find right now.

Hey Kane,

So from what I understand she's keeping with warmer water fish, but is focused on an AP technique known as deep water culture, which is a method that involves a large pond with rafts floating on it that allow plant roots to dangle directly into nutrient rich water.

This is a pretty good video about it from youtube.


I was wondering if I could maybe ask you some questions about WA's food production efforts, and about yourself and your adventures into sustainable ag? I would want some time to dig through your website and develop a list of questions based on that and some of my own research, but how would you feel about being interviewed?

I am more than willing to follow any stipulations as to the use of your answers, and have a good chunk of experience in interviewing people. I used to write for an online music magazine, and have gone out on a number of trips to places around WA to interview AP enthusiasts, and Chicago to interview people in finance (kind of strange but you'd have no idea how many times they asked me to put my computer away and get my hands in my pockets before they answered certain questions or told war stories, I always obliged).

Anyways, let me know what your thoughts are, it'd be great to get a chance to learn from you.