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Trucks and Scaring Fish? We love our toys, don’t we? I hate the idea of giving up my “BAT”, for one thing because of the price of oil. “BAT”? Oh my “BAT” is my “Big A** Truck”. She’s an older Dodge 2500 diesel quad cab…mmmm yeah. I LOVE my BAT. She’s towing our mini-house camper on this trip and still getting the same fuel mileage as my brother-in-law’s brand new Tundra Quad GAS engine does when it ain’t towin’ nuttin’…Hah! So there, Joe! In Texas, who has the best truck is very a big deal. In fact, in our family, making fun of other trucks is a continual pursuit, and of course we’re convinced we have the single best truck ever made. The coolest thing about alternative fuel like bio-diesel…well umm… other than saving our existence as a species an’ all THAT… is I get to keep my TRUCK! Don tells me conversion to bio-fuel will take ‘bout half an hour and some hoses. Major coolness. And we can make it ourselves. And I think that fella out in our part of the world has had a truly GENIUS idea about how to mass produce bio fuel without using fuel to grow the crops…Algae! Man! So simple… wish I’d thought of it ten years ago when we were developing a private use aquaponics system. We spent half our time checking algae levels. AQUAPONICS first pioneered by Tom & Paula at S&S Aqua Farm in Missouri “A closed and symbiotic ecosystem wherein one can farm raise fish and organic vegetables” would be my best description. Fish effluent is wonderful fertilizer…the tilapia we raised loved certain plant matter in their diet. The plants kept the water clean for the fish and the fish fed the plants. Mutually beneficial relationship without the wasted water either pursuit often causes. We had 2 poly thousand gallon tanks for the fish and plant trays filled with river gravel and plants. Pump water from the fish tanks to the trays… let gravity take the cleaned water back to the fish. If we now add to that system panels of some sort for the circulating water to flow over and sunlight… WOW…then we have organic vegetables, farm raised fish AND bio-fuel in one symbiotic and totally environmental friendly system. I’m likin’ it so far. We had the first and as far as I know only working private sector aquaponics system in Texas last time I checked. (Until the local flooding forced us to stop) And none of us has a degree in any field even remotely related to knowledge we needed to do this. What we had was three people with pressing health motivations focus on the goal and we eventually made it work. We had cherry tomato vines full of fruit climbing to the ceiling of the greenhouse/barn and healthy/plentiful fish. We were so successful, in fact, that the university Ph.D. type people who couldn’t get their (probably WAY larger) system to work would send their Ag. Extension boys to come see what we were doing… we eventually designed and ran a mini-system display for them at an organic farming Home and Garden type of event. Anyway, I say all that as an example of what focused and determined common sense can accomplish and to tell this very funny true story about it all: I got a phone call from the Ag. Extension with a question from the university. “How do you scare your fish?” ( I swear to GAWD that’s what he asked.) So, I pull the phone from my ear and stare at it a second…what in the cornbread hell? I waved at the guys and whisper, “he wants to know how to scare fish!” …”why?”…”no idea.” So in a very calm voice: “Well, Sugar…As far as I know…we’ve never scared our fish on purpose. If you could give me an idea of WHY you’d want to scare fish then maybe I might figure out HOW best to accomplish it.” The guys started leaning closer to the telephone and I started playing with funny fish scaring scenarios in my head. The first image that popped into my brain was Corey sneaking up on the fish tank, and yelling BOO! At which point, the more than just a little confused fish scatter. (Once again I swear by my BEST gun) This is what he said: “He needs to know how to scare fish to increase fish effluence.” “Um…darlin’…are you saying you want to scare the “poo” out of your fish?” Well, now I had to cover the phone with my hand because we got to laughin’ so hard and I didn’t want to embarrass the man. As our guffaws quieted to barely controlled snickers… “Yeah…we need increased levels of nutrients for the plants.” “Well, I’m no scientist…BUT …seems to me if you FEED them more, they will POOP more…I mean you can only scare the poor things so many times and they’re gonna run out of poo…you have to FEED them more to keep the “poo” generator going.” “Okay, ‘preciate the help.” I barely had time to hang up the phone before the three of us got to laughing so hard that we scared the parrot and got her “poo” generator going. I knew exactly what had happened back at the university…he’d tried a new radical direction with something and was under some time constraint or something…and was looking for an answer to make it work. And for probably only the time it took to receive our reply…he’d checked his common sense at the door. Mick
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