Backyard farm

I started preparing for this blog in January 2019, as part of my continued walk towards a simple and environmentally conscious life.
Our eating habits before we started this journey in July 2018 was one of convenience. Now we plan our meals, prep our food and try where possible to cook with fresh ingredients. Even though we are eating more natural food, the damage we cause to people and the environment are higher than we ever thought!
My goal is to construct a back yard aquaponics system/chicken coop and grow food, both vegetable and animal in a small area of my garden taking up eight square meters of my garden as the productions area.

With this project, I have 3 main goals

1. Improve the quality of the food my family eats
2. Reduce the cost of our food on the environment
3. Be sustainable and efficient

1. Improve the quality of the food we eat.

Price often dictates the quality of the food we eat, I often make choices on price which should never be a consideration when trying to feed your family with good quality and healthy food. Food is a natural resource and we should know everything we can know about the food we eat. Our ancestors fed their families with the seasons, we chose an easier way of life chained to our desks and eating process food. I want my children to eat the best healthiest food, I know I cant produce everything in my backyard but its a start. 

2. Reduce the cost of food.

This goal has nothing to do with the actual cost of the food we eat, and everything to do with the cost of getting our food from the farm to the table. Its about the effect all our food has on the environment, from pesticides and other chemicals to greenhouse gas and land degradation.
My aim is to remove the use of pesticides and other chemical fertilisers from the food we eat and ensure the water used to create our food is not damaged or wasted in any way.
Remove the CO2 footprint from our food, no transportation and no packaging.
By achieving this to any degree will make a difference, by writing about it and sharing it with people in my eyes is a small step to making the world better. Even is one person tries it I feel its a step in the right direction, if my children grow up being thoughtful about the environment and the effect they have on it I have created a catalyst for change.

3. Be sustainable and efficient. 

Everything about this setup needs to promote sustainability and efficiency. The fish will need to breed and repopulate as we consume the larger fish, the plants need to be let go to seed and the seeds need to be kept for future years. Water needs to be reused and new water must only come from rainwater collection. Power used must be created from solar power and battery, the control system needs to be 100% automatic
Fish will be fed using a maggot farm constructed as part of the build, duckweed and insects larve grown in additional tanks in the future.

Design.


 CHOP System (constant height one pump), there are two 850l usable IBC's where the fish are kept the water from the 6 grow beds drains into these fish tanks bringing the cleaned water back to the tanks. The tanks overflow to a line and channels the dirty water (contaminated ammonia and nitrate enriched water) to a holding tank. All 3 IBC tanks are fed air continuously this helps the fish and the plants. For 15 minutes every hour the pump operated and sends the dirty water to the grow beds for the plants and the bacteria to clean. The pump delivers the water up a central line with six branches going to each grow-bed, the flow is controlled by ball valves to ensure that the water flow is sufficient to full the grow bed and activate the syphons but not too much to cause the grow bed to flood.
There are two types of grow-bed in this system media filled and deep water culture. I don't know the benefits of either however I plan to use the grow-bed with media to grow the plants that are not regularly replaced like strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb and herbs, while the DWC beds will grow the fast-growing and seasonal plants like all the salad items and chillies.

Media filled grow-beds before planting.

Media filled grow-beds after first plant

DWC bed before planting

DWC bed after planting

Pump and flow reducing line to control flow to grow-beds without increasing pressure on the pump. Pump has a built-in level switch a necessity to ensure your pump is safe



First fish, common carp which I chose because they are indigenous to our country and they can be good eating according to articles I have read, they can taste muddy but being as this system has no mud there is not much chance of that. According to my research back in the Victorian era carp was a stable food source.



 Looking to the future

This system is full of possibility as the fish get bigger and I get all the grow beds full of food, I believe I can definitely feed my family all their vegetable requirements during the peak seasons. Due to the fact, the plants are not competing for water they can be planted closer together allowing more plants per square meter than conventional gardening. Additionally, our yearly fish intake can be grown in these tanks, convincing my family to eat the fish is a different challenge for a different blog post.
As for the system, this is the first prototype and providing it is successful I aim to build bigger and better systems in the future to maximise my use of my little space. There are already a few learning already made that will definitely be used when constructing the next one. 

Uniseals, these should be used for each penetration to ensure a water tight seal. It's a pity I only discovered these after the build these would have definitely  improved to build.

Grow bed depth, I built the beds 330mm deep but these are too deep they hold too much water and media resulting in high loads 200mm bed depth would have been better.

However, the next operation is to build the greenhouse around it and install heating and grow lights. Power usage will always fall within the power constraints of the solar panels for power.