Setting up our Home Aquaponics System A-Z

So my family and I have decided it was time to build our home aquaponics system from scratch and see what we can do.  I studied the theory and some application of Aquaponics in regards to growth of leafy vegetables with a man named Eric Maundu of Kijani Farms, based in Oakland California some years back.  I have had this passion for learning more about Aquaponics since then, though haven't had time to do anymore trainings.

Aquaponics is essentially the growth of vegetation, mainly leafy greens and vegetables by circulating and transforming the effluent of fish, typically Tilapia, into assimilable food for the vegetables.   It's an exciting alternative agriculture technique that is becoming an interest of agriculturalists world wide. The terrific thing about it is that it requires very little water topping off to keep the system viable and as well has the capacity for high production yield.   It's something that is great for places suffering from conditions of drought and subsequent food shortage. 

When I was in my husband's country of Senegal, located in the Sahel of Africa, a very droughty locale, I decided that I would learn how to make, sustain and replicate the systems in different parts of the world such as Senegal where I think it could be of great benefit.

So this is the first Post in a Series, Aquaponics at Home, A-Z.  We want to detail our experience here building and putting together a rudimentary system, just to show how cheaply and simply such a system can be put together just for ones own family and to learn how to maintain it in general.

Below are some images of our 1st step in this process of preparing the Aquaponics system...

Step 1:

Basically I decided to start from seed some  brocolli, collards and lettuce.  They all do well as seedlings in colder weather which we are starting to have here in Georgia so that is why I chose them.  We decided to experiment with a couple of start mediums. One are the peat plugs I bought at the Hydroponics store and some Organic seed start mix.  Both have already begun germinating after 2 days.  When they get to a nice size I will throw my little florescent light on them to push them into becoming nice little seedlings.

Tilling the Garden of the Mind

Today started out as a laid back day for my daughter and I.  We got going with our day doing a yoga video.  Our days usually begins with "PE".  My daughter usually uploads a video of a yoga practice geared to children or watches one on youtube.  One we really love and suggest is Cosmic Kids Yoga.  We do our yoga or I facilitate an Afro-based movement and dance workout, sometimes aided by youtubes and anything  I can find with exhilarating drum rhythms.   I find making exercise and meditation the beginning of each day allows us to both go into what we need with more focus and concentrated energy.  Plus, taking care of your body feels so good!

After our yoga practice today, Ka and I kind of meandered around our lessons.  We did some Language Arts, focusing on the use of new spelling words in a writing assignment.  The unit study, which is my new approach to this whole home schooling thing, is an in depth into writing informational pieces.  These pieces involve research, brainstorming, drafting, re-drafting and revising and upon final revision, publishing.  This way, by the time she has gotten each essay where she wants it, she can learn a bit about publishing online and in blogs.  We hope to get her blog up and  running this week!

We took a couple of hours after Language arts today because I was tired and needed to run an errand.  We went out, bought some groceries and of course she was able to practice her skills with money exchange.  Then we went outside of our local health co-op,  The Daily Co-op and practiced with my daughter's French flashcards while sipping organic coffee and tea.  My husband is her official French teacher since he's fluent in it being from Senegal, but since he's been gone for about 6 weeks, I've had to jump in and take his place for the time being. So far so good..I can't wait till he returns though, we miss speaking French and his native Wolof language with him.  Sometimes we work on Spanish a tad of Portuguese, the other languages I speak. 

Homeschool or Bust

So, I am a home schooling mother..This home school journey has been an interesting one. In a country like the US, where people are in denial about the absolutely inadequate nature of the public school system, you really have to trust in yourself to venture into schooling your child at home.

There are naysayers, family, friends, people that you thought at one time believed in you and your capacity to provide your young child with most of what they need.  Then once you decide to work with your own kids a home instead of subjecting them to the school system madness, you find out who really "gets" it and who is simply not living in reality.  My daughter, Ka is 7 years old.  She started out at 5 years learning at home with me and through various international long term stays. When we were domestic, we had the luxury of a really sweet mainly people of color home school co-op based in Oakland, Ca. This community, It Takes a Village,   provided Ka and myself with the community we needed to really thrive with the home school thing. Plus, she was young and not of mandatory school age yet so it was a little less of a stringent situation.

After Ka turned 6 we decided due to my pregnancy and instability on various levels, to turn Ka over to try the school system in Clarke County Ga...She learned and gained skills and I was somewhat pleased with her development.  Yet, I felt in my heart that though she had solidified her basics, like reading for example, that the school system came with a trade off, that over time would not be worth it.  Just the nature of the whole system, the odd discipline techniques, focus on desk learnng,the testing, the lack of outside activities and stringent nature of the whole experience and what that would mean over time just didn't  seem worth it to me.  And as a native Muurish/African or Alkebulanian woman, I knew that the school system as we know it has very little to offer a child such as mine. So, we opted on homeschooling again when she entered the 2nd grade.

One of the things I love about home schooling is how deep we are able to go with whatever we feel like going into.  There are no parameters to the learning, and one subject often, usually flows into another because as our brilliant ancestors understood, all knowledge and learning is One, as is everything in creation, so things such as "Subjects" just didn't really exist.

Today, Kamania and I went to the local community center where I do volunteer peer mentoring with some pre-teen youth.  I was sitting with one 5th grade girl, far wiser than her years and listening to her vent about how much her own school lacked in terms of truly providing a learning environment for herself and those kids that do want an education.  We live in a nice size town/city in Georgia and though it isn't a rough urban environment, lower income folks abound in the town and as is all across the US, are predominant in any public school.  She expressed her sadness at how so many of the more unruly children disrupted and made it difficult for the children hungry to learn.  It hurt my heart to hear her feel so frustrated with very little options.  I told her to take it as a test of her own capacity to hold her center and stay grounded in chaos and extract from the environment all that she can, despite it all.  It was a powerful moment for us....

And in that moment, my daughter yells to me "Mama, look, we are picking up trash!"  She was so proud to be putting into action that home school discussion we had on personal responsibility and community service that we had just 2 days prior.  I was a proud Mama....

The Wild Approach

Into the Wilderness is about my wild journey into deeper levels of understanding myself as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife...At the core of it all is a need to live life with a certain abandon while walking the thing line of oblivion and responsibility. I have done it all... Whisked my oldest child from one part of the world to the next, in pursuit of some evasive opportunity to escape from what seemed to be a system that was unfriendly to me, as a woman and as an indigena, an Original woman. I've lived off the grid in a tent with my little one, eating from earth and exploring the simple life...I've danced, sang, grappled with my path and my purpose until I came to the conclusion that it just is what is... I've seen a lot, made a whole bunch of mistakes and have grown and expanded through it all.  For me, life has been about doing it and seeing what happened...An authentic approach, but one that is still subject to the law of cause and effect.  Only now am I understanding that Ma'at must reign at every turn and that sometimes the less exciting venture, is the most rewarding one... So journey with me a bit deeper into this wilderness with the simple things in life serving as the crux of a bold journey....

 True Afrikan Indigenous Family