One of the food options in addition to raising chickens we've considered is aquaculture. As this is a brand-new topic for me to explore, I'm finding it hard to track down information. Anybody have any good URLs or books they'd recommmend? Any sage advice?

My husband and I have 1.17 acres of land and want to raise as much of our own food as possible. Doesn't sound like much land, but when you've been raised in neighborhoods where you could spit into your neighbor's diningroom, it's a lot to us...and the minute I walked on to it, it said 'welcome home'...

-- Karen Isaacson (karen@terraceweb.com), August 02, 2000

Answers

Here is a starting point for you.

aquaculture news

-- Steve Belanger (csymag@midway.tds.net), August 02, 2000.

Karen, you can grow a lot of food on your little parcel! So don't appologize! (Don't cover the whole parcel with a big house, either! LOL!!) There is a lot of information on 'intensive gardening' and 'mini-farming' -- even mini-livestock, if your zoning will allow you to keep animals. Good luck!

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), August 02, 2000.

Karen,

Another good source of what you can do on a small piece of land is the magazine titled Small Farm Today. They have an annual trade show every November in Columbia, Missouri.

Their website address is http://www.datasys.net/edpak/small.html

-- Robert Addison (FarmerbobMO@netscape.net), August 02, 2000.

If you are looking for something on a very small scale, I have been transfering information over from ornamental water gardening. Right now, I have a second hand 8'x2' stock tank full of 20 half raised catfish, floating ornamental water plants (salable, by the way) and a big ol' plecostamus (sp?) inherited from a friend. I use an ornamental pond filtration system I picked up at a going out of business sale, and a submersable pump that I picked up on sale as a discontinued model. I also picked up a (curb score) old swimming pool filter that I am in the process of adding to the loop. If you want to get really intensive on this, Small Farm Today has an article in their latest edition on combining your aquaculture system with hydroponics. If you put the hydroponics trays OVER the pond to help provide surface shade, you can conserve space and have an easier time controling algae bloom at the same time, although with that arrangement I would recommend a net stretched over the water to keep leaves and such from dropping in the pond. (so little time, so much to play with, sigh ;-)

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), August 03, 2000.

Karen, You have more space than we do ( we have 1.3 acre). You can do a lot. My wife and I have a "traditional" 35 x 90 garden and I'm raising fish in wading pools in the carport. Also, experimenting with more container crops to be able to utilize "non tillable" area of the place. The possibilities are unlimited. I gardened when living in an apartment in Huntsville, Al and all I had was a 15 x 20 patio. I still put up 1/2 of my food stores and held to my roots at the same time. You have the potential, let us know how you maximize your 1.7

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), August 06, 2000.

Karen, Addition to my above post. Sorry , thoght it said 1.7 , but even 1.17 is good. Check out the archives here they got 17 or 18 threads listed. Also, we found this season that taking produce to the local farmers market and flea market helped pay the expenses of planting with a little mad money to boot. Next year I hope to be able to sell fresh catfish too.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), August 06, 2000.

Karen, Something else to look into. Another member of the forum posted the address of an urban gardening site , www.cityfarmer.org I checked it out and it may be of help to you also with minor modifications to a small scale country environment.

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), August 07, 2000.