"I am 100% an accidental farmer . . This all started as a hobby, and I saw the opportunity and went with it." Now Chad Hebert and Warren Burgess grow 10,000 perch: in a warehouse near I-35W and the Crosstown.
Their warehouse appears to be full of huge dad-made bunk beds. Fish are in the bottom, plants (lettuce, tomatoes, herbs) are on top. Pumps run water from the fish tanks to the "top bunk where the water is sprayed continuously onto the oxygen-producing plants in their soil. The water runs through the soil, where it is filtered by soil, roots, and the beneficial bacteria that live there.
"The water then drops in a frothy stream back into the fish tank, becoming highly oxygenated as it falls. No wastewater is ever returned to Minneapolis sewers. "We have water in there that's four years old," explains Hebert."
There's also ladybugs, impatiens (flower habitat of the ladybugs), and 14,000 red wiggler worms, all interacting together. The goal is "to make a box of fish in a warehouse exactly like a self-sustaining healthy lake that produces a sustainable, incessant three-course gourmet protein- and vegetable-rich meal."
This is from "After the Oceans," by Dara Moskovitz Grumdahl, Twin Cities foodie and writer, in Mpls-St.Paul magazine. More sustainable indoor farming tomorrow.
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