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Fish tanks are great, but serve very little purpose beyond their beauty and function as “pets”. Designer Mathieu Lehanneur, however, decided to take things a step further. He was inspired by the Locavore movement — essentially the idea of gathering all of your food within a radius of 100 mile — and decided to create a functional tank; one that would feed as well as entertain. Here’s the general idea:

This DIY fish-farm-cum-kitchen-garden is based on the principle of aquaponics coupled with the exchange and interdependence of two living organisms – plants and fish. The plants extract nutrients from the nitrate-rich dejecta of the fish. In doing so they act as a natural filter that purifies the water and maintains a vital balance for the eco-system in which the fish live.

Basically, with such a system in place, you could have closed loop environment to feed yourself. Granted, you better make sure one or two pairs of fish survive to keep the system flowing (as well as seeds from the plants), but you get the idea. Lehannuer’s design was on display last April in NYC. We have no idea if the creation is still in use — but if he invites you over for dinner, expect something fresh to hit your plate.

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Check out the trailer for this short documentary that has won just a few awards.

Click here to learn more about the film.

More Information Here.

Eating local is an obvious way to reduce the impact your palate has on the planet. You can’t get any more local than you backyard garden or window sill, but have you considered the acorns that fall outside your window? Or perhaps there is something growing in the greenbelt near your home that would make a nice addition to your salad. Can you eat the weeds? Green Deane of Eat the Weeds takes us on a journey of wild food foraging. Green Deane presents his message in video form, he does a great job helping you in identification of the plant as well as its habitat, and use.

Be sure to check out all of his video’s on Youtube and visit his website, eattheweeds.com, for detailed information.

In the mean time, how about those acorns?

The idea of purchasing “organic” foods depends a great deal on trust.  I trust the farmer has taken numerous steps to grow food without artificial or chemical products, uses natural pest control versus pesticides, etc.  He in turn trusts that the products that he is buying to fertilize his fields are based on organic standards.  Without that trust, an “organic apple” is just an apple, a head of “organic lettuce”, is just lettuce, and so on.

Some argue that the government should set standards so that those farmers practicing organic methods of farming and husbandry can be monitored and those standards enforced.  Others (myself included) would like the government to stay out of it (mostly).

A recent article brings to light a breach of that trust.  It reveals that several seasons worth of organic food were grown using a fertilizer that included ammonium sulfate – which is made from fossil fuels.

Sacramento Bee:

For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer’s dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.

The company’s fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.

As a result, some of California’s 2006 harvest of organic fruits, nuts and vegetables – including crops from giants like Earthbound Farm – wasn’t really organic.

It goes on…

State officials knew some of California’s largest organic farms had been using the fertilizer, the documents show, but they kept their findings confidential until nearly a year and a half after it was removed from the market. No farms lost their organic certification.

To me the best way of insuring that you have fresh healthy food that is grown with care for the environment and for the consumer is to know your farmer.  Nevertheless, one should realize that even Farmer John can get duped.  Another reason to start up a compost pile, and start growing your fruits and veggies in the back yard.

The NY Times has an article up on their site recently discussing how a small town in Vermont is using local foods to save the local economy of their small town.

“Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. “The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business.”

This is interesing to me because they are essentially building the entire local food infrastructure.  They are moving past the idea of just supplying beef or vegetables to consumers at the farmer’s market.  They are actually moving into producing local food products.  They are preparing the town for the future where food will need to be more local.  And even better, they are recirculating those food dollars in their town to be reused over and over.

Check out the article and let me know what you think.

Inspired by the people at Urban Edibles, and Fallen Fruit we headed out to find some fruit. An open space park near our home was originally a homestead that was settled in the early 1900’s, and within the park there is a legacy of fruit trees. However  these trees have not been pruned in years and the fruit is growing well above the easy reach zone.  Instead of hauling a ladder all over the park we employed the Fruit Harvester from Lehman’s. It is a padded basket with integrated hooks that once mounted to a pole will allow you to harvest all that out of reach fruit. 

The Fruit Harvester is sold with a two piece handle that extends from 4′10″ to 8′10″ long. I purchased the fruit harvester head  separately, choosing to devise my own pole mounting for the harvester. As an arborist I have a couple of pruning poles that interlock to add reach to the saw, I just needed to devise a way to mount the harvester to a pole. Searching the garage I found an old seat post from a bicycle and figured that would do the job.  I drilled a hole in the seat post to allow for the interlocking hardware of the pole and mounted the harvester to the post.  The harvester worked wonderfully and we are now enjoying the ‘fruits’ of our labor; applesauce!

Kitchen Gardeners International featured this interesting video tracking the history of how the White House grounds were used to grow the food that the White House needed.

California Heartland, a California Public Television program, has a feature episode on the Dervaes family from the Path to Freedom group. Click here to go to their website and watch the video.

The Dervaes family are interesting as they raise a large amount of food on their small Pasadena lot. They show that it’s possible to be mostly food sufficient even in the city, you just have to take a different path to get there.

We’ve featured them quite a bit here at Groovy Green. You can search for Path to Freedom in our search box to see all the stories. I’ve linked here to an interview we did with them.

Image courtesy of the California Heartland website.