Training Day 1

Today was my first day at Aquaponics training at Today's Green Acres in Elora, Tennessee. I'll do my best to describe what I did and saw, but honestly, I'm totally running on fumes. I didn't sleep well last night for a variety of reason.... I was nervous and excited about today, it felt weird that Wiley wasn't with me at night, and I kept getting anxious about the possibility of bed bugs and fleas in my hotel room. Never mind that I checked and didn't see any evidence of bed bugs.... I just get the heebie-jeebies sometimes I guess.

Anyway, back to today:

The owner of Today's Green Acres, Randy, is a certified teacher of the Friendly Aquaponics system. One of the owners of Friendly Aquaponics, Tim Mann, is also here to lead the class. There are a total of 9 people in the class and they are from all over the states. It's all men except for me an another woman. There are two from California, one from Kansas, one from Louisiana, one from Michigan, one from Indiana, one from Chicago, and the lady from Alabama. And me, of course. The guy from Chicago and I are the youngest people in the class. Most everyone else is in their 50's and 60's.

We started out with introductions and hearing the stories of both Randy and Tim. It was a long day- starting at 8 AM and ending at 5:40 PM. We learned a lot and I even got to do some water testing in the big fish tank. I tested for PH balance, nitrates, nitrites, water hardness and ammonia levels. I can happily report that the fish in TGA's tank were healthy and the water was fertile!

We saw some great slides of different things that Tim has done on his farm in Hawaii. He's got a cool set up that's totally outdoors year-round. Can't do that in Tennessee, but then again, it's cheaper to live here than there... so that's the trade-off. He's got a whole experimental section and he's currently trying out pineapple (with results that are fine, but not so great for commercial applications) and banana trees! He's had to support the banana tree with a brick or two under the float, but the tree has matured 1 1/2x faster than normal and has sprouted 11 baby shoots. He's also tried just planting a banana tree in the ground and watering it with his fish waste water and another as a control nearby that gets watered with the hose and rain. The one that was watered with the fish waste water is 3x bigger and has produced 3x more fruit than the one without. The photos of the two are amazing... I'll try and upload them at some point.

Anyway, I'm falling asleep fast, but I cannot say how happy I am and how lucky I feel to be able to be here and learn from Tim and Randy. They are so enthusiastic and so open to sharing as much information as they can. I'll write more tomorrow, but now I'm completely falling asleep at the computer.

If you have a question, ask!