Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

mmmmm I'm definitely getting trout again this winter. Didn't do them last winter but not going to make that mistake again.

Those Trout look even better in the sink, nice size fish

Brian thanks for Brine Recipe, I'm always trying new recipes for smoking, they're all good but I still don't have a favourite as yet.

Thanks guys.
They still look pretty good, eh?

Good morning
No rest for the weary.
Actually I feel pretty darn good considering the long day of work yesterday.
Welp, let me cut to the chase.

Thanks to Jonathan Dean for kicking me in the butt and making me start working on the outside of the house We really appreciate the help son. Mister "We'll have lunch after dinner," man, lol!

We're trying a technique Jona and Sara heard about from one of their plasterer clients. First layer over the OSB (oriented strand board) is regular building wrap, over that is dual layer asphalt impregnated paper. The dual layer tar paper serves two purposes; the outside layer provides a surface for the cement stucco to adhere to. The inner layer remains flexible and there is even a thin air gap between the two layers.

The building wrap provides a vapor barrier between the OSB and the exterior portion of the wall. Building wrap breathes and that helps the interior walls regulate temperature changes between the interior and exterior walls.

After completing the soffet on the new addition I decided it looked great except for the fact that it doesn't match the kitchen roof. So I dug into it seeing what was what. Yep, as I suspected there is water seepage where I did a lousy job sealing around the windows in the kitchen. The damage isn't too severe and we don't want to mess up the interior wall in the kitchen by remounting that huge window, we'll dry it out and rebuild what we can without tearing too much up.
The plan on the roof portion of this house is replace the whole thing with non-galvanized roofing sometime as soon as we can afford it. In the meantime it is ugly, but knock on wood doesn't leak, so it can wait a year or two.
For the soffet extension I'll attach 2"by4"s along side of the existing truss rafters and bring it down the the same extension as the new soffet. Then I can get a gutter up and get this glorious rain out from the uphill side of the house.


I have been collecting forest litter in the form of pine needles and the duff beneath to use as mulch on our gardens. I may bring some this morning for inside the greenhouse as I really like the whole idea of soil regeneration, so why not do it in the soil beds in the greenhouse too? I'm also hoping it'll slow down the the slugs and pill bugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillidiidae.

WOW! top job on the Stucco-backing, rendered up it will all look a treat, well done

Wow I was starting to think it was just a NM thing to leave exposed plywood out to the elements forever... So you really are going to cover it... At least with wrap and black stuff...

Looking good Brian.

Thank you Joeblow. It's going to look especially good once we decide on our custom stucco color Sara is an expert color creator for all types of plaster and cement even the gray cement and lime mixture we'll be using to make the stucco. Curiosity got me again and I went looking for where the term stucco came from just now. Interesting history Plaster mortar stucco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stucco This stuff fascinates me to no end. There so much history involved and
the craftsmanship wow! I can see why Jona changed his career from electrician to plaster color. Mixing plaster is alchemy and the alchemists were so secretive they made their own personal coded language for notes or just kept formulas in their head until they died. https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/blog/the-language-of-alchemy The Voynich manuscript is still a mystery after thousands of years.

Pretty cool stuff.


That's okay Rob, a lot of people don't realize how poor many of the people here in New Mexico are. On top of that our lame healthcare system destroyed my credit many years ago and I had to learn to build my homes paycheck to paycheck. Political point: Imagine what life would be like without social security?

Thanks, I love your avatar btw

I hope today I can actually get off the couch and work again. lol.

I don't recall if it was on here or another forum, but I had someone who questioned why I was putting insulation and siding on my greenhouse when I was finishing it... like it was abnormal and a waste of money to do it. So that is when I started to notice other areas of the country and the world in general and pay attention to how they finish their housing... I figured it was something to do with the climate differences not needing to do it, but did seem odd to me to have exposed plywood that would eventually rot away, but figured it must be the norm for the area just like the norm for our area is to vinyl side most everything... wouldn't have thought to question it before someone asked why I was putting siding on my greenhouse.

I still don't understand the significant opposition to universal healthcare/publicly funded healthcare in the US. Not wanting to get into politics or anything but what about normal human decency and caring for your fellow man?

A lot of sides to it but a lot of it comes down to (and I'll try to write it neutrally as I can to not take sides):

Freedom from government overreach. Not everyone believes in the "social contract" or whatever you want to call it and you shouldn't force a U.S. citizen to pay for other people's care/services. The same people probably also would say they don't want to pay for other people's unemployment, etc. and that these kinds of things should come from voluntary donations through private charities/church/etc.

Making progress

On the political front in the USA, latest polls show a slight majority of Americans want single payer health-care of some sort. Now if we can get the money out of politics we may get what the people want instead of what the corporations want.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/

I understand that some people don't want to be involved in the social contract. But it surprises me that people think that by willfully not paying for other people's services somehow doesn't affect them. But let's be honest the intention is not to make someone pay for the services others receive. The intention is actually for nearly everyone to pay for healthcare cover and then that also helps people that can't afford it, where they get to benefit from a group effort.

It's kinda funny that someone will be happy to ensure that minimum wage stays rock bottom, accept their services everywhere but then blame those people for not being able to afford basic (but overpriced) medical services as if it is somehow their fault or because they are lazy or something.

The bottom line is that having millions of people not covered by healthcare has a very negative impact in our society.
It absolutely does, it's just not really measurable. But if you have people in your society with long term untreated illnesses, people dying in circumstances where they could have been helped or saved and people that are living subpar quality of life because they can't get the treatment they need it totally has an impact on every individual and society as a whole. It causes a huge amount of difficulty and negative issues but of course if you can't put it on a ledger in a debit/credit column for many people it then simply does not exist.

Sorry I wrote way more than I was planning on writing!

Thank you so much MartinC. I believe you nailed it.
I'll move this over to the "venting corner" before we get in trouble with the mods