Retirement project

[Michael simonzi]

My wife wished I had gone with golfing but i decided upon farming as my retirement activity. But I wanted to be environmentally and ecologically conscious, I wanted to grow year round in the northeast and I wanted to be as maintenance free as possible. I was intrigued by the idea of aquaponics so initially visited a number of farms to include a day with a professor over at U-Mass and got to work building a system. I started with IBC totes, one for the fish and one each raft and flood and drain grow beds. There was some trial and error and my wife swears each head of lettuce cost $20 but it ran productively for over a year. The humidity was a problem given I was doing this in my garage so I took it apart and embarked on a very ambitious project. I had an actual 22x32x6 foundation poured so I'm combining the concepts of a walipini with the aquaponics. So the roof will be directly on the burried foundation with a 20' south facing roof at 45degrees using 16mm triple wall polycarbonate and a 60degree north face. I bought a blemished 675 gallon tank for the fish and the rest is yet to come. My intention is to establish a coop