One Fish, Two Fish

People were wondering about the fish gadget we have over to the right. Aside from being visually pretty, the swimming fish represent one of our main areas of interest: Aquaponics. So much of today's fish farming is bad for the fish, the farm, and the environment. Our goal is to have sustainable, healthy, delicious fish and we plan to do this through Aquaponics, blending hydroponics and aquaculture. Our goal is to have the most modern, efficient, and sustainable technology in our aquaponics systems and then teach those skills to tomorrow's farmers.

We got our two beginning fish for our mini-aquaponics system we will set up soon. We would like to have a functioning and small system so that all of our ACRESS family can experience the aquaponics system: see it, touch it, feel the humidity in the air. Having our eyes on such a far away goal as our farm, we like to reward ourselves with urban sustainability to remind us of the goals ahead.

Meet our Oscars: Jung and Freud. A Scotts Valley family generously donated these fish and the tank set up and we can't wait to hook it up to some veggies and start growing!

Rummage Sale

Nacho, part of the chihuahua ACRESS family

Our hundredth customer!

Sporting her new purchase: a bag made from recycled sweaters!

Thanks to everyone who donated items to our rummage sale - it was a success! We got a lot of community interest and helped many people find new uses for items or find the perfect thing. Several families donated a number of quality items and it made for an interesting sale. People from every walk of life strolled by our sale on the way to the flea market down the road. All in all, we can't think of a better way to spend a weekend and we'll be sure to have another sale soon!

Enjoying a donated toy car

Our VERY FIRST donor!

This man said he'd been working on his hat for four years! He found the surfboard key chain at our sale and decided it was his next addition.

Welcome, Fall

Our rummage sale fundraiser was a great way to ring in October! As thoughts are shifting to the seasonal change and corner lots are springing pumpkins, I get excited about the yellow light that illuminates my morning air and go out of my way to crunch leaves. Everything feels earthy: brown, gold, gray, evergreen, these are the Fall palette of Santa Cruz County. I hear school bells and open house speeches, I see crossing guards and little kids with new back packs adapting to life back in the classroom. I smell pumpkin pie and wood burning stoves and sometimes I just stand in the first rain and breathe deep. There's nothing quite like the smell of dirt during the first rain and I never want to be so busy I cannot enjoy it.

Another way we welcomed Fall was with this pumpkin chowder recipe. I wanted to take it to work the next day for lunch but by the end of the evening it was all gone!

With Fall we also welcome the beginning of the holiday season and the excitement of ending another year. ACRESS will be busy building community relationships and doing outreach this season. We're excited about our October 22nd event on "Make a Difference Day", here's me building some planters:

We took old fence boards and scraps of wood and screwed them together to make very basic planter boxes. Craigslist often has free dirt and I've been working on some good compost to distribute with the plants. This morning I found some tiny potatoes that had grown where I thought I dug them all up. Those will be the starters for the potato growing drawers I will be making soon. I'm a huge advocate of repurposing or reincarnating objects, so I have a long set of drawers that will soon house many potatoes.

Today I planted donated lettuce and arugula seeds, I'll post pictures when they sprout! I think my favorite part of planting something is seeing those first leaves burst through the dirt. I also picked my round carrots this week, they didn't do so well in a container, I suspect because they were not thinned enough. I call them midget carrots (they prefer the word midget) and they are perfect in soups or roasted in the oven. See my recipe blog for a roasted root vegetables with honey balsamic glaze and dill flowers. 

With such exciting food to be made it's hard to find time for setting up our mini-aquaponics system! See our new fish in our next blog article.