What are we up to now at Aquaponic Mini Farm #1

Sept 1, 2015 posted by ThreeSpaces "Best Personas" team

Aquaponic Mini Farm #1 (AMF1), in Palm Beach County, is Fresh Table Farms’ first farm location. It is our goal at AMF1 to explore low capital cost construction for scalable aquaponic farming. We have a vision of hyperlocal farming grids made of AMF’s built on fallow land in urban and suburban locations with 5-15 year use cases and great profits to owners and great benefits to communities. We are excited to report that we are so far, proving the feasibility of our case.

With less than half of our initial capital raise we have built a fully functional facility including: a 1500 gallon fish tank, filter system, pump systems, air system, a 3500 gallon deep water culture (DWC) grow bed, and an aquaponic powered seedling table.

While the first DWC grow bed represents less than 20% of the vegetable matter growing capacity we plan for the AMF1 facility, the construction to date represents roughly half or more of the infrastructure required for the full capacity planned. It also represents some very interesting and useful iterations down the low capital cost curve.

Now we are testing plant production in that first operational DWC grow bed and growing our seedlings on the aquaponic seedling table, all with noticeable and improving results as our biomass comes online. Our water levels have responded, both to our increasing numbers and size of our fish (the core of our biomass) and also due to some filtration and other adjustments made by our engineer in early August. We are approaching normal targets for PH (7.0), NH (0 ppm), NO2 (0 ppm), and NO3 (40 ppm). We have also adjusted the iron level in the water for more ideal plant leaf growth and color. Now we plan to test 1-2 more weeks of seedlings for quality and taste before moving into initial production.

So I am pleased to report that we know our first milestone is just ahead of us. That’s the point in time when we provide samples and then sell our first herbs or greens to our first few customer targets.

Thanks for reading our update. Please stay tuned for more!

PS – So, as we are getting ready for this milestone, we are designing a new logo and some marketing campaign slogans. We may use our new designs on some labels for our produce, and we plan to begin promoting our goods locally with the logo and slogans. Below are three different logo/label designs repeated with a bunch of different slogans. If you feel so motivated, please write to me and let us know which one(s) you liked. Meet Peter Jay/Organic Tech Activist on ThreeSpaces

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