Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

mwdesign, he is probably too busy with the education side and running the farm to have individuals visiting him on a daily basis. Did you register for one of his education sessions? He has them on the farm itself. I'm sure that he would show you the plumbing if you were at one of his design seminars.

Just out of curiosity, why would you offer to pay him to see the designs of the DWCs if you were not planning on doing it commercially? Surely his plumbing would be so much different to a backyard system that it would be a waste of money to pay to see it?

Hi Continuum. I would have paid for the on site course, but he told me he only does the online thing now and I'm more of a "see it with my own eyes" kind of guy. Why would I have paid just to see it? Well, why would one pay for a tour of Growing Power, or Joel Salatin's, or any other farm? Right off the bat I can tell you that over the years I've become an agrotourist, so it would have been fun. The highlight of my FL trip was the farm tour thing at Epcot. Second, no amount of education is a waste of money, and its something I can pass down to my kid. Plus I think paying a little money for a visit would have been a small investment that would have saved me headaches and money later. I'm certain that you've cut more than one pipe incorrectly or placed something too high or too low and it didn't flow as you had planned, and then had to rethink your whole project. Just look at Andrew's project. An amazing system, and a HUGE source of inspiration for me. I'm sure he would have preferred to know that the water pressure would have cracked his troughs, before he built them. At this point I want to get my system expansion complete, and get my family eating healthier. I can keep on and on, but I have a ton of work today in order to shut down the shop for Holy Week.

Cheers,
Felix

Fair enough.

I really don't appreciate you bitching and moaning about me not allowing you to visit my farm and you are not respecting my decision by stillbringing this up after how long??? Ive now seen you do it on multiple occasions...get over it. This reads like a child who was told no and cant wrap his head around it.

I'm sorry you were disappointed with my answer, I'm sorry you are asking for something I don't offer and I'm sorry you cant respect my decision. You are a stranger...do you get that? Some guy off the internet and I'm supposed to open my home to you and your family because you happen to be traveling to my area for vacation? GIVE ME A BREAK.i live in the vacation capitol of the world! I get 20requests a week to visit and wouldn't even be able to farm if I offered tours. This is the whole reason I created an online platform. But you don't like to learn like that you want to see it in person...its a free market go somewhere else. It is beyond agitating to read your responses about me when I went out of my way through SEVERAL emails to try and guide you in the right direction and show you why taking the online course would be cheaper and better for you... But that's not enough.

I AM NOT A TOURIST ATTRACTION.

"Varies from person to person, moon phase, tides" Grow up. It doesn't very at all. You got the exact same response as everybody else.

What if I just demanded to fly down to your island and make you show me around your sign making shop? I don't care if you offer that service but if you don't let me I'm going to go back and bitch about it on the internet. Who does this?

I used to come hear to spread inspiration but I don't come here for this BS.

Like you said Continuum I am just too busy to offer onsite visits. This is the entire reason I spent a year creating my online learning platform at www.collegeofaquaponics.com. This way I don't have to affect all operations to host guests and teach an in depth course. By recording it all and making it available from anywhere in the world, students get a lot more information and they have 2 years to go through all the video content, tests, diy builds etc. Then, instead of re-teaching the same thing a million times I can focus on creating new content that will further help aspiring farmers. I've had an OUTSTANDING response over the last year and 90% prefer learning this way compared to an onsite course at 3-4x the cost (after hotel, air, food, etc).

And just like you said- why would you demand to come stare atmy pipes when I offer to teach you how to properly size them yourself from the comfort of your home? My pipes are buried! He would have been staring at a bunch of dirt!

Like Eddie mentioned I do most of my updates right to our facebook page these days but as far as an update, things couldn't be going better!

The farm is still running strong and we have produced over I want to say 140,000lbs of produce up to this point. I am also in the middle of building out several new farms for clients this year and have several more lining up. I will try to get some recent pictures up here for this thread when I can find a sec.

Thanks for the update Ryan. I'll look for your on Facebook so I can keep up to date with you.

Wow sound like you are very busy with all that growing and farm building!

Well Happy Monday.

MISTER Chatterson,

Your comments remind me of having any conversation with my son, who is twenty going on twelve. Did you not read my closing statement : “…its his farm and one has to respect his decision.”?

My comments were in response to OP’s suggestion, they were based on my personal experience, and I stand by them. Just as if I would have bought a pump and it crapped out a month later, I will bring it up as I see fit, because it was my experience with it. We will always have positive or negative comments on products, services, and service providers. I have not broken any laws or any code of conduct with my comments.

I appreciate you going “out of your way” to respond to my emails, and I’m flattered. I suppose you don’t really respond to prospective clients’ queries, and you made an exception with me? Unfortunately for you, however, I was not convinced with your emails. The only “guidance” I felt that I received was guidance to buy your product. It read like another insurance guy trying to convince me as to why I need another policy.

Its great for you, that you created the online platform. It should make you quite a bit of revenue, with the least amount of effort compared to a hands on, on site course. However I share the opinion with many others over the back channels. Online lessons are not hands on training. A lot of information can be watered down as you please, and the person paying for the course will never get the same as with hands on, face to face training.

Please allow me to make my own determination as to if cheaper is better, and I don’t believe it is. I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for. I would have gladly paid for the on site course, as many others would have. Nevertheless, after reading your little tirade, I want nothing to do with you.

It is my opinion that the the people who spread inspiration here are all of the people who have nothing to gain out of sharing information. I personally post my system photos to learn and to say “Thank you” to all of the people who have freely shared information that has lead me into creating and expanding my system. Its is my opinion that you, Sir, stopped “spreading inspiration” a while ago. You have been explicitly advertising your program for a while now, and are therefore conducting business.

I will now be unsubscribing from your thread. It is my opinion that from now on, this thread will be used as an infomercial.

I'm sorry you are lashing out yet again at me because I didn't offer something you demanded from me.

You went out of your way to come into my thread and try to paint me in a negative light because you were pissed I wouldn't let you visit my farm.

All of your opinions on online education are just that... your opinions on something you've never taken yourself but has 100% satisfaction rating with every single student that has taken it.

There is no infomercial, only your negativity in what has been an otherwise great longstanding thread that a lot of people enjoy. The only reason I pay a monthly photobucket bill is because of this thread...


Do us all a favor and leave this thread forever, your negativity is NOT WELCOME

Your systems are very inspiring I have used a couple ideas from your back porch system.
Thanks for sharing your success with us.

Ryan,

Thanks for all the information you've put out. I currently have no immediate plans of starting my own system, but I continue to subscribe to your thread because it is so well thought out and presented. If I do have some free time in the future and begin my own system I will have no problem paying for your online course.

Keep doing what you're doing - there are many of us that DO appreciate your work.

I'm kind of agreeing with Ryan on the tourists coming through and looking at the system.

I get a few people wanting to come through (youtube, thread on here, reddit, etc), and most of the time I say yes and show them around, it's not frequent enough to be too much of an inconvenience. But if that went up to 20 requests a week, I'd be saying no very quickly, one of the good reasons my systems isn't as impressive as Ryan's.

You can't just spend 10 minutes showing people around, and then go back to what I'm doing. My wife is paranoid about people seeing a dirty house, so we have to have a clean, have to mow the grass, etc. I also can't start messy jobs I like doing on my weekends in the shed, so I need to wait till they've gone.

Then people like to stay and chat, and depending on the people this is fine, or annoying, or if I have shit I want to be doing instead. Then most annoying is when people come in late, or simply don't turn up (which happens too often). I'm hanging around, not doing my other jobs I want to do because somebody is almost there. And then half a day on my weekend is gone and I've got nothing to show for it. If I was trying to run a business at the same time, it'd be a nightmare. Let alone doing courses when that's not your main business - everything comes to a stop, no seeding being done, no tomatoes getting pruned, and whatever jobs are done on a daily basis.

That said, if I was in Flordia (can't see that happening), I'd try and sneak in and do an in person interview for my YT channel. With beer.

....I think your last statement MIGHT let you get away with it!
"Beer" ALWAYS helps... 3:)

TJ

Finally made it through all 90 pages! This has been an excellent read. Please don't let Naysayers get to you. I'd hate to lose my best veggie porn site.. I'm in the process of finding a 10 acre farm of my own and want to build a backyard system of my own. Hoping to feed my family off of it to start with, but if that goes well, then I will definitely be taking your course. I build artificial turf ball fields for a living right now, so I do concrete, drainage, plumbing... definitely not deterred by hard work. Right now I'm in the busy season and working 6 12 hour days and have a son that turns two next week, so no time. Things slow down at work in November, so hopefully I can find my farmland by then.