I guess since I only have a few friends that followed this, they won't care if I ramble.  Since I quit posting on here many of life's pricks have struck the farm. Blood clots, heart attack, Dad got sick, we buried him in May of 16. Since then we have been taking care of the step mom 24/7. I am worn out, pissed off, and just generally tired. Pissed off because the step mom won't do anything. I mean anything. I have never minded helping someone, but I expect them to help themselves, to the best of their ability. That just doesn't happen around here. It seems like she does everything she can do to consume all my time. We have radios so she can get me anywhere on the farm. When she rings I run, because I never know what she needs. She could talk to me but she won't, just keep hitting the call button.  Well, we have had it and are working on placing her into a nursing home. I was not raised that way' we have always taken care of our own. Maybe its because she has never wanted to be part of the collective, just my dads wife. She has 3 kids of her own, they don't want anything to do with her now or in the past. She gave them away when the oldest was 5 and the youngest was under 2. I can understand their reluctance to step in now and don't really blame them.
   All that said, where will we go from here?  With Sheri not able to work, yet not able to get SS Disability, and me having taken early retirement the options of going out to work is limited. OK so that only leaves the ability to survive in our hands, here on the farm. I have to say, the farm has really gone down hill in the last 3 to 4 years. There isn't anyone to help, even for pay. The green house needs to be rebuilt, the wood has rotted out from my neglect, it needs the plastic replaced, and probably all new benches. The gardens are full of weeds, the deer have made this place a salad bar, they have stripped the fruit trees to the point I don't know if I can prune them back and even save them. The grapes may or may not come back. I sit here and look out at a place that we were so proud of, and it just makes me sick. Sadly,  I don't know that I can bring it back. At this time I am planning on trying. I hope I am tough enough. Sheri will help all she can, I know that, but I hate to ask when I know how it will make her hurt. I suppose we will have to take it day by day for awhile. With the good Lord willing we will do our best, that's all we can do. More will follow, I am going to use this as a place to vent till I can get the AP system up and running.

Cleaning Time

I moved all the fish to one tank now. I need to take the grow beds out of service, clean out the roots and sediments. The bell siphons need to be cleaned also. The drain holes are full of roots and slowing down the out flow back to the tanks. I hope to get on this soon, as I don't want to leave the fish crowed for too long.

July 10, 2013

I have been making some changes in the AP system. I am raising the circulating pumps from the bottom of the tanks. I have the tanks tied together with a 2 inch line from the bottom, where the original drain valve is. I have installed a sump pump 12 inches below the surface of tank #2. I tied it into the top of all tanks to discharge above the surface level to help in oxygenating the w3ater in the hot weather. The Blue Gill that were in tank #2 are now in tank#1. That puts the loading rate at 50 fish, all of which are at the 1/2 to 1 pound size. I am trying to eliminate the need to clean the filters on the pumps. This is an every 3-4 hour event that I need to stop. When I am all finished I am hoping to turn tank #2 into a giant swirl filter that can be cleaned every couple of days.  I will try to get some pics so you can see what I am talking about.

Well it has been a long time again since I posted on here. I don't know why, just lazy I guess. I have been spending most of the winter cutting wood, stoking furnaces, and wondering why I am doing this. LOL It's not been that bad, just a lot of crazy sleep times. There are no more catfish on the farm. I have expanded the amount of Bluegill that I have. Claygirl has had a few of the fish, she says they are very good. They are a nice white fish, which we fillet. There are several more that are getting up to eating size. In the picture below you will see the tomato plants that have been growing since I started this. I was going to pull them all out but thought I would see how long I can keep a plant going. I have cut these back to almost nothing twice now. If you notice the 2 tall plants in the plastic sleeve's, they are celery.

I do use a lot of 2-liter bottles. The rest of these pics are just random shots.

These mustard plants are on their second year. The tall one is getting ready to bloom. I will try to keep this more updated for those of you that followed it.

I am still picking tomatoes, green peppers, chili peppers, mustard, and basil. I haven't pulled the chili peppers yet, there are still a lot of peppers on them. They are going to have to go soon as I need the room for the lettuce. I picked up a timer in town today so I can begin working on the strawberry towers. I have about 8 catfish left, I moved them to a tank that is a few degrees warmer. I don't know if they will survive or not, they are pretty stressed. I talked to a plumber today, and he is going to help me try to come up with some kind of tank heating system. It has to be cheap to operate, and not contain any material that would be toxic to the fish and plants.

I guess I can add some of the things I have learned so far. I found out, when the large exhaust fan's motor quit that I really didn't need to waste the electric running it. The greenhouse temps got up around 120'F in the daytime. I had a problem with with the lettuce, it wilted during the day.  The rest of the plants did fine. I believe it was the fact that the root systems stayed cooler in the rock and water. The evaporation rate of the fish tanks was high enough that I was adding makeup water every morning, and that in turn kept the tank temps under control.

I have lost just about all of the catfish over the last two weeks. The only thing that I can figure is the water temp dropped too fast. Even with a wood stove running the water temp has dropped from around 75' to 56'. All other parameters are the same, so for now that's the best idea I have.  The bluegill doesn't seem to be bothered by the drop in temperature, other than they have slowed way down on their food intake. They are in tighter schools than when the water was warmer though.

I am ready to start planting lettuce again. The new seedlings are up. I picked the chili peppers today, so I will pull the plants out and replace them with lettuce tomorrow. I harvested a two gallon bucket of Juliet tomatoes, and nine nice green peppers.
I will have to cut back the Juliet's in order to have room to plant the fall crops, as the beds are full of tomatoes right now.

Another thing I have learned is when using 4" pipes to grow in, the plants should be a short season variety of whatever is planted. Once the plants reach maturity, the root ball will block the pipe and slow down the flow of water to the rest of the plants. Also, the pipes need to be flushed out about every three weeks to keep sediment from building up.

I guess it has been a long time since I updated this, huh. Well it has been a very dry and hot summer here. I have learned a lot about the AP system since I first started it. Some good things and some not so good.

    I was worried about the temperature in the greenhouse so I put up the shade cloth, the same as we use in the regular greenhouse, and found out it cuts out too much sunlight. The plants were just sitting there. Nothing was growing like it should.  I started dropping the shade cloth until around mid day, and the plants seemed to explode with growth. That was one lesson.

Another thing I learned was that lettuce would grow all summer long if you just remember to start the seedlings. The direct seeding method didn't work. I am guessing it was because the ambient temp was too high. The seeds that were sprouted in the workshop lived, and produced all summer, till I had harvested them all.
Mustard greens on the other hand do very well by just seeding them straight into either the grow beds or the grow pots.

Redhouse, Juliet, and Tumbling Tom tomatoes, a variety of peppers, celery, cabbage, egg plant, basil, broccoli, parsley,and fennel also do very well.