Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is what you need Boss

Seat swivels round when your using the back hoe

We saw a ditch cleanout on Saturday (near Mora, I think). I didn't realize they were community events. The ditches are used for irrigation and fed by river, or well?
My mom has a place in AF, so we try to go once or twice a year. Always stop at Charlies in Las Vegas for burritos, coffee, and tortillas... but haven't been to Sapello's "Hair Shop"

Acequias here are fed from streams. Everyone with water rights helps clean out the ditch where it comes down from the mountains to feed the pasture irrigation downstream. That area is called the public section, for some reason.
Haha no I haven't been to the hair shack either, but it pretty cool how the put their business out of town like that. That road to Angel fire was one of my favorite roads in this area to run with my motorcycles. I hadn't been in quite a while, but back then there were a few places where they paved the road right through the forest with a few big pines trees right on the edge of the pavement. You needed to curtail leaning around the many curves in those places to avoid hitting those trees. Fun fun fun. My buddy teased me forever after the muffler fell off my Harley while changing angles going around one of those trees .

Funny story! Yes, that road has improved a lot (especially during the last couple years) since I first drove it in the mid-90s.

It was perfect for motorcycles even back in the Eighties. It had a sign at the beginning that read something like "NO RVs"
I scratched the cylinder heads on my BMW R 900 on several occasions delightfully leaning into those curves. Man what a rush.

Mornin'
I've not written in a while, but we're doing pretty good up here in Northern New Mexico.
From my morning newsletter:
It's been a while since my last post. Here is a little update on what Nell and I are doing these days.

We're getting really close to being finished with our rental house. Nell and I stopped in to visit Danny Bradley a couple days ago on our way back from visiting the urologist in Santa Fe. Danny has a really nice setup going on there in San Juan. He and his wife, DJ are fixing up a 100 year old adobe house and doing healing herbs and potions in a fabulous court yard garden. Danny donated a couple of fireplace glass fronts to replace the one I broke in the rental house. That's an ongoing project I'm working on. Thanks Danny, that'll make a world of difference if I can modify our fireplace front to fit them, if not I'll drop by Leo's Glass and Glazing to see if they can cut tempered glass. I also have a broken mud room window that needs repair. That'll need to wait for the first of the month to do.

Speaking of the first of the month, happy birthday to my sweet love Nell! It's also Adam Compos' birthday on the fourth, 2 days after Nell's on the second. Happy birthday Adam!

I am still thinking about building a deck on the front of the rental house. I have a few pretty simple plans in my head to accomplish that improvement. We're currently painting the exterior of the house a gray-blue. Nell and Prissy have the interior finished, thank you two so incredibly much for making that house livable again. In fact with all the things we did to the interior we think the house has never looked better. We'll be renting the house for $850 this time. The rent will include water and electricity up to $100 per month. I still have to remove the old caulking under the kitchen sink which we removed to repair a leak and finish the drywall under there. The manufacturer used the same caulk throughout the house and it got really hard after 30 years and that caused the leak behind the sink. I'll try a heat gun to soften the old caulk.

A couple days ago we visited with Louie and Prissy to pick up some windows for upcycling for our planned greenhouse extension. Nell and I have made a practical decision about our plastic consumption. We had looked into building a machine to shred plastic and extrude it into something useful, but it turned out to be extremely complex project, so now we are focusing on avoiding plastic as much a feasible. Aluminum is recyclable here so we're going to buy cans instead of plastic bottles. We'll use water from our seven stage reverse osmosis filtration system to fill any plastic bottles we already have, then switch to aluminum when the plastic breaks.
An added bonus of that visit is they gave us walk-in cooler panels!

April-26th-2019-Walk-in-cooler-panels-yes-I-know-what-to-use-these-for

The idea is we'll set the panels against the back of the shop where the wall is made of Styrofoam SIPS. We'll buy a big chest freezer to set in there for the meat we get from the deal with the cattleman. The freezer should expel enough heat to warm the inside of the cooler in Winter to keep it from freezing. Thank you both Louie and Prissy for this generous gift.

Meanwhile it looks like more rain today. Boy howdy the grass is growing gangbusters. This is the wettest Spring I can recall.



April-26th-2019-Garage-door-getting-Brianized

Somehow I built the garage door opening to eight foot tall and ten foot wide and garage doors come in two widths 16 foot wide and 8 foot wide, and neither are 8 foot tall. I have a plan, hehe all devious like. Now I just need to make that plan a reality. I'll post updates on the garage doors as I get to them.
The first thing I saw when looking at installing a garage door on youtube is there is a big bag of nuts and bolts associated with the job, crap I don't have any of that stuff as the garage door I'm using has been sitting for years while I was ill. It occurred to me that others may have a similar problem and I went looking for an installation kit... Lo and Behold:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/DURA-LIFT-Garage-Door-Hardware-Installation-Kit-for-8-ft-x-7-ft-Doors-DLK8/306405277
Homedepot-garage-door-kit It's not even too expensive, but this will also need to wait for the beginning of the month. But hell yeah, the is renewed hope to have a garage door that actually goes up and down like a garage door ought to do.

We're brooding six Bantam chicks this year. They're about four weeks old since we bought the from Tractor store.

April-26th-2019-Greenhouse-update-everything-is-growing-super-well
Personal information for me is there is a fairly new treatment for https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/benign-prostatic-hyperplasia/symptoms-causes/syc-20370087 After doing some research after my visit to the urologist I feel good about a procedure called Urolift This looks quite promising as I'm currently suffering from retention which is quite annoying and not good for the bladder.
That's all folks
See yas
Brian and Nell

Good to hear that Nell and you are doing good and are active.
Winter is finally over and things slowly are greening up.
My pastures survived the last 2 drought years and are coming back strong. I have been all over my place, lots of damage in the forest and the fences from the snow, lots of work, which will get rid of the winter gut.
Still to early to plant anything outside. I am itching. Put some potatoes into one of the raised Wiking beds, outside, they can handle a little frost.
My little hot tub coy pond took a serious beating, 5+ feet of snow can do a trick. We had nearly 9 feet of snowfall and over 2 feet of moisture in it. Everybody was bitching, I just loved it, hated the plowing and -20F.
My Honkers and Ducks are back. The girls are sitting on their eggs. The boys hang out and strut their stuff, lazy machos.
I have trained my Kune Kune to come galloping when I whistle, like I do for my dogs, treat time.

Have a huge thunderstorm to the East, great display, while I wind down, just got home from work.
Rain for the next 3 days, love it.
Bring it on, flood the dam place. I want my rubber duck to do overtime.

Boss, have you heard of "field horse-tail"? It's a plant used to make a tea/infusion which is apparently effective against retention. Perhaps you know about it already, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. My girlfriend uses it, and says it's definitely effective. Here in Spain it's called cola de caballo, latin name is Equisetum arvense.

Have you re-stocked your pond since harvesting all those trout? I love your natural rock pool btw!

May 9th 2019 wet ol' snow. Probably half rain. We're ready for Spring, already. Waaasss Uuuppp?










Nah it ain't nothing, except emotionally


My cat and my wife of course both being here and helping me get through the latest medical BS.
I was in the emergency department then the hospital then back home for a week, now scheduled for a minor procedure tomorrow to open the urethra called a Urolift. Sounds simple I hope so! https://www.urolift.com/what-is-urolift See ya on the other side.
Danny and Gnoib thanks for the comments, I'll respond this weekend if that's okay?

Good luck with the procedure.

Spring is not showing up. A few days as a teaser and than comes the next storm, with freezing temps and snow, hail and rain.
30 inches of moisture since 1-1-2019 and the weather folks at noaa forecast a wet May, with below normal temps, for our area.
Some folks in the valley will get wet feet. The Dolores River is running close to capacity and the high country is still very white and is getting more snow.

Snow hail and rain, yup sounds about the same here, but our average precipitation is 16 inches. We're in hog heaven. I bet some springs pop up on our property this year.

Good morning
After being sick so much these last few years, I'm coming up with ways to lower the maintenance load on me to account for some vacation time and traveling. As you know I pushed our aquaponics system over the edge by 65 Brook Trout this last season by bringing in 100 fingerlings. The fact is, it worked, although as you no doubt know it also had many ill side effects to my AP. Our four media beds look more like bog filters than functioning media beds. They all need to be emptied and the clay beads cleaned.
The other system is our spa Koi pond. Naive as I was I never thought about the fact that if kept healthy Koi can live for thirty years. That realization kind of hit me like a sack over the head punch in the stomach. The 4 year old Koi are already out growing the spa pond.
What I contemplating now is not replenishing the trout this season to give our AP a break from overload. One possibility is there are five four year old Comets in the 2600 gallon 10000 liter AP. They are low maintenance and keep the AP algae free with their grazing. What if I moved to Koi inside to live with the Comets? The Comets are six to eight inches while the Koi are up to 12 inches and there are four Koi. The outdoor spa pond has worked better than ever this Winter with the Hugelkultur mound along the north side and the compost bin along the East side. It is fully buried in sod. I could keep some goldfish in there or just shut it down for a vacation period.
We have raised six chicks this year. You may know I'm allergic to eggs so we bought Bantams hoping they will survive better than the Guinea fowl did. Something else has come to mind now that my brain is working better again; if we were to raise meat chickens instead of trout the duration from chicks to meat is finite. We'd then get a break from farm maintenance during Winter at least and still have homegrown meat protein for the year. The AP would get it's break and continue to settle down letting me get the water chemistry leveled out so out greenhouse produces better and a larger variety of food.
Thanks for listening
Brian

Mornin'

Cloudy skies as well as a bit rain and hail, but generally looking pretty darn good up here at 7500 feet.
I'm feeling surprisingly well lately. I've managed to work two full days in a row without any adverse side effects for which I am eternally grateful. I worked yesterday as well getting our chicken pen functioning again. That project got damped when a light hail caused me to run around the yard covering up freshly planted outdoor vegetables from the greenhouse. Thankfully and ironically no sooner than I covered the last delicate plant, the hail stopped.

I've been doing maintenance on the little Koi pond as well. There is String Algae growing everywhere in the pond this Spring. I've been pulling it out and putting it in the compost bin. It doesn't amount to much but I clean it every few days. I guess it is time to build a wind proof roof over the Spa Pond. As I said in a previous post I wonder if our lives would be simpler if I moved the Koi into the fish/green house? I'm all into keeping it simple these days.
I did a couple quick cleanings of the filtration for the Koi pond. I believe the RFF is working fairly well with the closed top stilling-well, but may change it around so it is more like the stilling well for the 2600 gallon system. That stilling-well has floaters holding it up at the right height and works even better at slowing the fish waste and dropping it to the bottom of the tank.

In the greenhouse aquaponics system fish and plants are doing surprisingly well considering the media beds need to be cleaned. I didn't take any pictures in the greenhouse yesterday other than this one of my naive solution to slugs and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillidiidae or Roly Poly bugs from being able to easily move around in the dirt beds. Part of Permaculture has to do with keeping the soil covered with mulch at all times which helps keep the nitrogen cycle functioning. I will keep you informed if this experiment works or not.

Meanwhile back in the chicken house the birds are growing every day and I need to get them access to the fenced in area as soon as possible. That project is so close I can feel it. The first thing I did was pull the axle off the construction trailer that was the home of the Guinea Fowl and then slowly jack the building up one corner at a time while pulling blocks out from under it. The box on that trailer is falling apart. We need to repair some of the siding to get it water tight, but it will never go back on the road. So down it goes all the way to the ground where it will be safer and easier to reach the wall which need repairing.

The chickens need a place sooner than the trailer will be ready to go so I pulled forward and then jacked up the brooder van so the front door meets the opening in the fence to the big outdoor pen which was for the guineas.


We ordered a rebuilt fuel injection pump for our Dodge 1-ton dump truck and I'm really looking forward to having a truck again. Probably next on the hit list if I stay well long enough will be to get our International 460 tractor running again and finish installing the front end loader on it so I can do a little landscaping without hurting my back.

Fun fun fun, that's for sure.
Thanks for reading.

Just looking through the pictures from yesterday and it turns out I did take a couple pics in the greenhouse.