Acquaculture: setting water to work while sitting in our dams and ponds

Geoff teach's us that in the western world we've forgotten how traditionally fresh water fish ponds were normal. Of course fishing in streams is still quite normal, but not many people fish in ponds and espcially eat the fish they get from ponds. We can produce more protein in water than on grazing land.

I started thinking about this point and how it is true in Italy I have friends that say: "I fish carp but I don't eat it, the meat tastes terrible". Of course it tastes terrible, it feeds off poor diets, in dirty water, thats why now a days we think of carp as a dirty fish. But carp is one of the most eaten fesh water fish in the world.

One just has to think about the way you keep the pond where you raise the fish, and what they eat. Then there are other options of course and not only fish based but even plantwise. 

There are plants that grow really fast and they can be edible for us or for animals we keep on our land. One can have plants that are integrated with duck systems.

One thing that is clear at the end of this PDC is that the strong point of permaculture is you never waste anything, a well designed system has a fuinction for every element that passes in the system.

So if you have Mulberries, you can feed them to chickens, use them to breed worms that can go to your fish, or chickens or ducks, use the fruit to prepare jams, or sell the fruit, the leaves as mulch. And this is just a few idea's that I got writing there notes.

The best medium in all this is water, so many different functions to play around with. Great, next post will be on the last weeks lessons, and then it's all design, design and design.