Last weekend we spent our Sunday at the Albany Arts and Green Festival.  Blessed with beautiful weather and a large crowd, we sold almost all our local organic honey, as well as many of the products from our Handcrafted Herbalim CSA. 

There was a diverse grouping of  booths at the festival; everything from solar/renewable energy to The Sierra club to The Alameda County Beekeepers Association.  We spent some time promoting our classes, discussing our farm with interesting people, and benefiting from all the giveaways (fruit trees, environmental books, compost and organic vegi starts).  

Fire Cider, Herbal Body Cream, Gardeners Salve,
Eucalyptus Lavender Salt scrub for sale

Both our honey and the model Warre hive we set up drew plenty of attention.  It was a blast talking about bees with other beekeepers and hearing about many of the local apiaries in the area. The best part of the festival was networking with so many interesting, like minded people. Of course taking home peach, apricot, and cherry trees, comfrey, globe artichokes, mugwort, and a few more starts for the garden was pretty great too.  Hurrah for the Green Festival!

 

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The decision to farm tilapia in our backyard started out as more of a gardening hobby.  We liked how tilapia took on the flavor of whatever preparation we decided to use on any particular night so it was already our fish of choice.  We started with a few Blue tilapia and after nine months of feeding them, they were all over one pound and ready to feed us.

The difference between our own backyard farmed tilapia and store-bought was incredible.  First of all, we never really noticed the brownish tint that store-bought tilapia had until we saw the beautiful white filets that our own tilapia had.  That first year we werent particularly concerned with water clarity.  We figured that the water that they originate from in Africa and the Middle East couldnt have been any cleaner than ours, so we relaxed a bit on the clarity.  But then we started thinking, how bad did the water have to be to stain the insides of the store-bought fish a brownish color.  Well, we did some google research and found out.  I dons suggest that anyone repeat our searches, you may not like what you find.  Lets just say that the tilapia farmers in Indonesia, China and Honduras (but especially China) arent raising their harvest in the cleanest water.

After cooking our first backyard farmed tilapia topped with our own paprika yogurt sauce (plain yogurt, sugar, paprika) and pico de gallo (tomatoes, white onion, cilantro) piled high on top, we immediately tasted the difference.  Ours had a clean flavor that we have never experienced.  Most people would agree that tilapia has little, if any, of that "fishy" taste, but after tasting ours, we knew there was a big difference.  The taste difference is hard to describe. The only word that we can come up with is "cleaner".  Sort of how a salmon has a distinct salmon flavor but its very clean tasting too, thats how our tilapia tasted.  Almost as if you could see a Japanese chef turing it into a plate of sashimi.

We loved our first backyard tilapia so much that today we raise them by the thousands and ship them all over North America and beyond.  And of course, we still eat them three or four times per week.

If you are interested in purchasing some tilapia fingerlings to raise in your own backyard, you can buy them from us for about a dollar each at backyardtilapia.com. By the time you factor in the cost of their food, you will spend less than three dollars per pound for your own perfect tasting tilapia.

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Last week ## edit  now already 3 weeks ago## of the project with the Bronx Writing Academy and Citizen Schools was quite eventful!

A student taking interest in her schoolmates accomplishments

This last week was the WOW! The WOW! Is the culmination of the programs that Citizen Schools offers, and plays out in a unique show, product or showcase by the students. For the Hydroponic apprenticeship, the WOW! was planned to be a public showcase, right in front of the school, to show the community what the students had accomplished.

We started by taking the last measurement for the plants, and finishing the graphs showing the growth of the lettuce and the cilantro. Then the "fun" began, moving the systems from the 3rd floor classroom, down to the street. By fun, I mean the kids had fun spilling the water from the system, and Amrita, the schoolteacher, and I had the fun of apologizing to the janitor. It was a bit of commotion but at the end, everything -the 2 systems, the posters crafted by the students, a couple of tables, and flyers- was taken down to the front of the school, reassembled, and ready to showcase!

Student explains how they recorded the plant growth

A local taking time to ask questions of the students work

The system was positioned right in from of the school, in the triangular section of grass where the flag post is (and a couple of raised bed that were planted last week or so). We asked the kids to try to talks to the passer by, and get their interest up, to bring them by the system. After a few shy attempts, a few of the students became bolder and started to bring people over, and zealously presented their work, the system, the plants growing in it, the nitrogen cycle and etc...
We had planned a quick conversation with JT Bear so give him an update and show our set up, the kids where happy to show their work (again) they have accomplished. They showed around the plants, called the basil lettuce (;-) and commented on the posters they had made. MANY THANKS AGAIN TO JT BEAR!

To be honest I was a bit weary on how it would turn-up, the week en before, I went to the few community gardens I knew about in the neighborhood, and "advertised" the WOW! To try to get some of the community garden member to come up. I was not sure if that was the right strategy, as they first responded by saying how they would be happy to show their garden around. To be fair though, these community gardeners have jobs, and therefore my not be able to show up. So I was happily surprised when I recognized a member of these community gardens. I was even happier to see that not only middle schooler leaving the school took an interest in their schoolmates work, but also members of the community from all ages. It was quite nice also (personally) to have a few people walking up to the kids and shaking their hands congratulating them on their work.

We finally brought everything back up, for a "end of project" wrap-up, including some awards for the students that did the most progress, and showed the most interest.

This was a great experience, and I hope it can keep going in the fall, but at this point I do not know yet if it will be possible. In the mean time, I found a restaurant owner that agreed to allow me to put the system in his patio area, so plants can keep growing over the summer. So I will keep recording what is going on in the comparison fertilizer vs compost tea over the summer. Also the herbs produced will be shared with the restaurant.

Finally, Many thanks to (not in order):Agnieszka Tuszynska (my lovely partner who was supporting the idea from day one), Amrita Kalsa (BWA teacher) , Alex Black, Maddie Oliver,Morayo Faleyimu, Molly Cohen and Katerine Mott (Citizen schools) , JT Bear, Bronx Writing Academy and his director Kasmar Samuels , Greening Forward and Margarita Vigodner (My boss). 

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Broccoli harvested from the garden in our sons handmade basket

Many beds still bursting with different varieties of kale

Snap peas make perfect garden nibbles

Food Forest beginnings: Artichokes, kale, chard, sunflowers, banana, and a young hawthorn tree

Cylindra beets

Dehydrated beet chips

Strawberry beet fruit leather- try it its amazing!

Lots of fresh cheese

Ginger!

Turkeys poults are growing up

Young hands jarring up honey- a sweet chore!

Drying the garlic harvest before braiding

So much to fit into these long, hot days.  Spring is feeling more like summer as we put extra mulch on the beds and get all the tomatoes, corn, squash, peppers and eggplant into the ground.  Ive been feeling way behind as there are a ton of vegis to harvest and process with very little time and only a few hands keeping up all the work.  Our trio of goats are fat and due to kid in less than a month.  The stalls need to be cleaned out and bedded with thick fresh straw in anticipation of the babies we so adore.  The chickens are steadily laying away and the turkeys are growing large before our eyes.  I think those seven funny poults may have imprinted on me because they follow me everywhere squawking, "Mammma!" in turkey language.  I have become quite attached to them which is going to be problematic come Thanksgiving.  We harvested a good portion of garlic yesterday.  Im excited to experiment with braiding both the soft and hard neck varieties later this week.  We harvested it still a bit green so the stems will be flexible instead of brittle.  Weve been eating mostly out of the garden these days and cant wait for the fruit in the orchard to ripen: citrus and apricots first, then plums, apples, pears, grapes, persimmons and more...We are really praying and planning for a big harvest this year so we can put up the summer goodness for winter.  Much depends on the drought/water supply and how much our grey water can keep the soil moist.  For now, were feeling optimistic and always filled with gratitude!

God never sends us more than we can handle. -Mother Theresa

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Tonight we will be doing a special show on CCN.  With everything that has happened in the past few days of insanity, we will be doing a review of everything that has been happening with the issue of the ITNJs Ceramony for signing their new constitution, the Vatican announcement, and more of the research that is coming to light, almost moment to moment.

Please join Mel Ve, Lisa Harrison and I, with special guests  on CCN tonight for the LIVE Stream broadcast at 11pm Engand time, or 6pm EDT.  Again, if you wish to be part of the converation, please go to the watch live page on Lisas website to join the chat room, ask questions, or share your opinions and thoughts:

http://www.lisamharrison.com/watch-live/


http://www.consciousconsumernetwork.tv/ccn-live/

Here is the Archive Video of last nights Roundtable show:

d





Further reading:

http://removingtheshackles.blogspot.com/2015/06/vaticans-new-earth-constitution-and.html

http://removingtheshackles.blogspot.com/2015/06/itnj-magna-carta-treaty-of-verona.html

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The students working hard!

Yesterday was the first session with the students at the Bronx writing Academy!
A small group of student joined the apprenticeship that we offer about hydroponics. The overall goal of the apprenticeship its to have the student understand what local food can be, and why it is sustainable compared to foods coming from 1000s of miles away.
Other goals are for the student to

the build of the day

learn how plants grow, what do they need to grow, how one can grow plants without soil. After introducing a bit more about what aquaponics is and showing a couple of videos showing important points on how an hydroponic/aquaponic system works. Then I pulled out the tools and the material and we all go building!
This sessions there was 6 students, 4 worked with the school teacher that accompanies us, and 2 worked with me. Our objective for the day was to build the frame that will support the grow beds, and put it on legs. It didnt exactly work that way, we got to build the frames though! First I showed them how to mark the center of a piece of wood, how to bore a hole with a mechanical hand drill, and how to use auto-piercing screws. The group working with the teacher build on of the frames, the other students and I build a second one.

Since got a slow start, it was a bit too much to put the frame on legs, so we stopped there to do the weekly creative/journaling activity. Every week we will have 1 or 2 activities that the students can keep track of Yesterdays task was to draw or write something that the words "farm", "city", "food" and, "hydroponics" inspired them.

The programs organized by Citizen Schools are called apprenticeship, and they are organized around a 10 -12 week period of time: 9-10 weeks are dedicated to the apprenticeship and the preparation of the last week (week 10, 11 or 12). The last week is when the WOW! is "done" the WOW! can be pretty much anything: some apprenticeship lead to the making of a public announcement clip, other lead to the making of a product, other can be an event hosted by the school or my the volunteers with the community. We plant to have the WOW! just outside the school, quite literally in the street, and present the work they have done : building the system, and explaining how it works. I hope that we will be able to bring people from surrounding community garden/urban farms and people form the neighborhood at large.

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Because the Arduino single-board microcontroller is a piece of hardware, most of my focus in trying to understand the world of microcontrollers (MCUs) so far has been on the hardware aspect. You know -- what components hook up to which pins on the Arduino, and what do the different electronic components do in each of the circuits I cobble together.

To get the most out of microcontrollers, though, one also needs to understand the software or firmware side of things. To get a better picture of how Arduino software functions, you may want to consider reading an article John H from the Humboldt Microcontrollers Group linked me to. The article is titled, "Understand Arduino development" and starts out this way,

"Arduino is a fantastic platform for getting started with embedded software development. You are provided a development board, and programming IDE all configured to work together immediately. As a developer, all you need to do is write your program, press a button, and it is compiled and uploaded to the board where it begins execution. Its important you understand the fundamentals of what is happening in the background to make this work for you."

I need to do more online research about the differences between learning C and learning C++. Then I need to buy Nick or John a beverage and have a discussion about whether my C / C++ studies should be done with tutorials, websites and books that focus on C or on C++. If I need the basics of C to do much of anything in C++, it might be helpful to know what specific aspects of C++ should spice up my C studies. According to the article linked above,

"The Arduino IDE compiles your project as C++ using the GNU AVR toolchain...So you are writing "real" C++ code, though there are a few hardware limitations to keep in mind. Its called the GNU AVR toolchain because it compiles code for the AVR micro-controller architecture."

I am especially interested in the section of the article that talks about large projects. Most of my learning projects will be pretty simple, but down the road I hope to get to the point where Ill build an MCU project with fairly complex functions and programming requirements. It appears it

will likely be helpful to learn how to write libraries in the Arduino IDE as well as sketches. According to the "Understand Arduino development" article,

"The Arduino IDE has the concept of a "sketchbook", and the programs that you write are called "sketches". So the sketchbook is a folder which contains all of your sketches...The sketchbook should also contain a folder called "libraries", which allows you to share code across sketches. Similar to structure of a sketch, a library needs to be a folder where the name of the folder is the name of the library...The main reason you would consider this is because you should split your project into multiple files by their logical function. You are not limited to using libraries to achieve this either, a sketch can have multiple source files...Splitting the project into modular files is key for long term development. It allows you to reuse code later on without having to copy and paste individual functions out of source files, rather you just include the library or add the source files to your sketch. When you make your project modular, you can document each module on its own, which allows others to use that module in their own projects without having to understand how the entire program works."

There are lots of two hour introductory classes or sessions on Learning The Basics Of Arduino where a person starting with no knowledge about MCUs or electronics can hook together a basic circuit and make an LED blink. But like anything complex and powerful, there are many hours of study and experimentation required to become reasonably skilled in the Art of Microcontrollers. Reading about "splitting the project into modular files" reinforces that blinking an LED is significantly different from becoming skilled with MCUs.

Reading the article (twice, so far) that John linked me to and doing a bit of related online research has had a definite impact. It convinced me I need to block out more time in my schedule for completing the work in the Jeremy Blum video tutorials and for gathering background information for a couple microcontroller projects that arent in the videos.

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Thats it! The system at the Bronx Writing Academy is completed!

In the past 3 weeks we have been building 2 hydroponic system using mainly re-purposed material with a group of student at the Bronx Writing Academy. We had a slow start the first week with 6 students in the classroom, but the students are enjoying it, so each week there was a couple more students joining the class. This week, we had 10 out of the 12 students who signed up in the apprenticeship!

In the past 4 weeks, we have learned how to use some tools (hand drill, screw diver, woodworking square, ect ...), we also learned the basic ideas that explains how an hydro/aquaponic system works, and how plants use water, CO2 and sunlight to produce sugars. We also learned about Ron Findley, a Los Angelino who started to grow food on sidewalks and explain his story in a TED talk.

The students have build these system (with guidance of course) and today they where pretty exited to see that we were going to be done by the end of the day. We installed hooks to hold the grow towers, we unpacked and cut tubing for the pump, installed the pump, and planted lettuce, cilantro and parsley seedlings. We finally tested the system and adjusted the pipes to make sure water was going into both towers. Some of the student took their cellphones out and started
filming the system! We then added the fertilizers to the systems!
By the end, we were ready to get the systems to the roof. there it went !

Only one thing is not 100% great, the school decided to not allow the system to be on the roof, after we set it there, I will have to go and remove it on Friday. Instead, the system will be put in a classroom used for small meetings, as close to the window as possible. The window is oriented to the west. I am yet to know whether we will be allowed to have supplemental lighting for It.

We will see how many of the seedlings need to be replaced ! (on Saturday it was snowing in NYC so I am not sure the seedlings had liked that.

*** I will add some pics of the students working as soon as I processed the video to extract a few snapshots.

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This afternoon was quite a day at the Bronx Writing academy!
After watching and discussing what earth day is/means, we had a hangout session with JT Bear. JT Bear is a gentle man from the west cost of Canada, who has youtube channel where he talks about his aquaponic set-up without hiding the problems he runs into.
We had a great time ! the students where a bit shy at the beginning, but they started to show what they had built, from top to bottom, explaining how the water flows from the bucket to the towers, as well as the difference between how on system is fed using store bought fertilizer and the other using compost tea. They showed in detail the different plants growing in the system : lettuce, spinach,"cabage" (actually Swiss chard), basil, cilantro, parsley, basil, and strawberries.

They then asked a few question to JT Bear about what he grows and why. They also asked if he was a cowboy ! JT Bear was a great sport and entertained the conversation with the students, going back and forth between subjects about our project, but also digression of video games and other.
The best question -I think - (from the questions "on point") was :
"Do you know what day it is today ? EARTH DAY !"
The students shared some of the thoughts about what we are doing to help preserve the environment. As one of the student say, by planting plants we help producing oxygen, and take carbon dioxide from the air. We also recycled salvaged wood and soysauce buckets, as well as made a worm composting bucket.

We finally ended the conversation and the excitement was palpable!

THANK YOU Mr. BEAR !

Finally couple of photos of the compost tea system on the left, and the "conventional" system on the right.


Thank you again!

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Interesting.... I remember when this project was first announced in 2012... then cancelled, then brought back to life, sorta, in 2014.....  And now again, Pegasus Holdings is talking about building their "SIM City", with plans to start construction in the next three months.... in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

... Can you say perfect film stage for just about any natural disaster, terrorist attack, false flag or "war"?


New $1.4 billion city is being built in the desert


http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-ideas/new-14-billion-city-is-being-built-in-the-desert/story-fnjpja3r-1227502878740

AT FIRST glance it appears to be an illusion — a giant, very pricey one.

A new city is being built in the middle of the desert at a whopping price tag of $1.4 billion and while it’s a very real place, it’s unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Despite featuring all the infrastructure you’d expect to find in a normal city, including skyscrapers, 35,000 homes, a shopping centre, church, service station and an airport, nobody will be allowed to live here.

The 38-square-kilometre area will also encompass farms, an industrial area, a rural road system and a highway.

It will be under constant surveillance and connected by underground tunnels, yet there will be no colourful details such as artwork or billboards.

Welcome to the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE), a planned ghost town for New Mexico, America.

Essentially, it’s a huge, fully functional test city, the first of its kind in the world.

According to development company Pegasus Global Holdings: “City Lab will be a representative example of a modern day, mid-sized American city. It will ... include urban, suburban and rural zones as well as the corresponding infrastructure.

“City Lab will be pre-wired for data collection giving researchers the ability to simulate system-wide scenarios and then draw data from such activities.

“It’s the first of its kind, in scale and scope.”

Here, drones will rule the sky as they test out the delivery of goods, and roads will be filled with driverless cars and trucks. And the beauty of it being empty of humans is that if something goes wrong, there won’t be any mass injuries.

“It will be a true laboratory without the complication and safety issues associated with residents,” Bob Brumley, managing director of Pegasus says.

“Here you can break things and run into things and get used to how they work, before taking them out into the market.”

Just 300 people will oversee experiments and maintain the city’s infrastructure.

CITE is a replica of Rock Hill, South Carolina, which proved to be a great testing model due to its mix of old and new building materials.

But the project has suffered some setbacks.

Construction was originally scheduled to begin in June 2012, near the town of Hobbs, in the arid Lea County, but the project was put on hold due to environmental concerns.

Its fate then seemed to be heading in the direction of these other forgotten, unbuilt cities.

Now it’s full steam ahead with ground set to be broken outside of Las Cruces for the real-life Sim City within the next three months.

Definition of CRUCES

plural of crux

Definition of CRUX

1

:  a puzzling or difficult problem :  an unsolved question

2

:  an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome

Origin of CRUX

Latin cruc-, crux cross, torture

First Known Use: 1718

Chinas Empty Cities: These Satellite Images Will Shock You

China building mega cities but they remain empty ghost towns

Why has China built a ghost town in Africa? Eerie footage shows brand new Angolan city designed for 500,000 lying empty

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Considering setting up an aquaponics system to feed your family?  Heres a few thoughts for the home gardner.

An aquaponic system with ten square feet of growing space can cost 1500 dollars and will feed you for about a week.  Think Im wrong?  Heres the facts.

The aquaponic system in question comes with a 100 gallon fish tank.  A one pound fish, lets say a tilapia, will yield two 4oz. filets.  A one pound tilapia requires 3.74 gallons of water to survive.  A 100 gallon tank will hold 26 one pound tilapia assuming you could fill it to the brim.  The fastest growing tilapia, a hybrid between Orange Mozambique and Black Hornorum (Wami), will grow to one pound in 6 months if fed a very portion controlled amount of food.  This means that you can get 13 pounds of fish every six months from this system under optimal conditions. A value of about 51 dollars at the grocery store.

This same system has 10 square feet of growing space.  That about the area of a standard computer desk.  What are you going to grow in ten square feet that can possibly justify the cost of the system?  Lettuce? Some peppers?  Forget corn or most root crops like carrots.  Regardless of the claims of the aquaponics cult, there are far more crops that will not grow in hydroton balls without real soil than there are crops that will.  Okay so you might get about a weeks worth of some salad greens.  A street value of less than 50 dollars.

It doesnt take a genius to figure out that its going to take you several years (if ever) to recover the initial costs of any aquaponic system assuming that nothing wears out, like the pump.  So unless you have a die hard cultist attitude with a huge bank account, I highly recommend you just buy your lettuce and fish at the grocery store.

Now,  whenever I write an article debunking the claims of an industry or business, I always offer a solution to the problems that I expose.  The problem here being the costs.  So heres my common sense solution.

Go to Walmart and buy a 14 dollar blue plastic splash pool.  Its about a foot deep and six feet in diameter.  Thats about 28 square feet for 14 dollars.  Drill 4 one inch holes at the bottom edge as a drain and cover the holes with coffee filters so the soil doesnt wash out.  Then fill it with 12 cubic feet of garden soil from Lowes for about 36 dollars.  And theres your grow bed.  It costs about 50 dollars.  Now set up a kiddie pool.  A 12 foot diameter pool with just 24 inches of water will hold almost 1700 gallons.  Thats big enough for over 450 pounds of fish and will feed you over 225 pounds of filets every six months. You can buy your tilapia at BackyardTilapia.com for about a dollar each.

Now, every day, grab a five gallon bucket of water from your fish and give it to your plants.  Your plants will grow just as fast as any aquponic system and you can plant a greater diversity to suit your taste.  Oh and the time it takes to recover your set up costs?  About six months.

In my own yard, I use splash pools for short root crops, three row high cinder block beds for deep root crops (like carrots) and I plant 72 corn stalks in plain old dirt about 8 inches apart in 4 rows. I grow over 30 different varieties of fruits and vegetables and they last all year.

Commercial aquaponics offers an exciting business opportunity with great income potential, but for the typical backyard gardener its just an expensive hobby.

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Making up some great wood based mulch from weed trees & mango prunings.. The flora & fauna that live in the soil thrive on this stuff & we are seeing lots of humus production as a result :)
We are lucky that we have a few weed trees around & some generous neighbours so can make our own to save a few dollars.. The only cost to us was the power to run the mulcher & $5 for some horse manure..

The next mulch we make up will hopefully be made using  some pigeon pea & other trees we are growing just for this purpose.. We have purchased Neem & Moringa tree to use in the mulch (as well as fro other purposes) so hope that they will bring their own qualities to future batches a year or so down the track methinks.. :)»



We also have a few other clips on Back to Eden/Wood mulching ..
Back to Eden inspired composted tree mulch trial...
Back to Eden compost update & easy DIY worm barrel..


For more regular updates about the patch come visit us at https://www.facebook.com/Bitsouttheback
Have a great one All...
:)»

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