Fishing? Giving, Teaching, or Growing?

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime….Chinese proverb…BUT what if this man or woman does not live near bodies of water with fish? Or if she does what if the lake is polluted with heavy minerals like mercury? Then what?

Our volunteer, Jason Kwalick , has a solution! Aqua culture! Raising your own fish to eat, but it goes further…he recycles the water and feeds vegetable plants with the fish wastes and in turn the plants and gravel clean the water.

It is so exciting to me that sometimes I’m not very clear. Let me back up…Jason has a deep love for aqua culture…he helped raise two kois that sold for $10,000 and $13,000 each…wow! Right after coming here as a volunteer, he talked to Mike about starting a demonstration tank on our finca, but we are having serious cash flow problems. Jason’s solution was to pay for it himself and set up a smaller version.

He bought a 200 gallon tank and dug a big hole and placed it there. He then cut two 50 gallon tanks in half and built a platform to the left of the tank and raised the smaller tanks above the fish tank. He installed a small electrical pump (can be done with a hand pump).

In the 50 gallon tanks he put in gravel to filter the water and planted some tomatoes, peppers and melons to remove the ammonia and wastes from the water… the plants flourish on these wastes. The pump is timed to periodically suck the water out and up to water the plants and gravity pulls the water back to the fish. The water dropping back in also aerates the water so the fish can breathe.

He even bought fish, which was harder than we thought…sleuthing a source for baby fish. We have about 75 fish!

When the fish are big enough, they are farmed and eaten. Fish are a high source of protein. As we show this to other farmers and they become interested…Jason can help set up their fish farms. El Porvenir is interested.

This is very exciting and – I guess – I will have to learn to clean fish!

Teach a cooperative how to raise their own fish and the cooperative can eat and grow more vegetables as well…....my version of a Jason Kwalick proverb.

-Kathleen