Greenhouse construction and environmental controls.
(Video made in October of 2009)
How Aquaponics Systems Work. (Video made in October of 2009) The systems you see here have been replaced by the Food Forever™ Growing Systems that are now available on this website.)
The amazing growth of the plants. (Video made in October of 2009)
So we studied every Aquaponics book we could get our hands on, did extensive web searches and met with experts in the field. Then we prepared our land, dug trenches laid both electrical and plumbing pipe in order to construct our greenhouse. Living in the High Desert of Southern California made it necessary for us to place our own Food Forever™ Growing Systems in a protected, controlled environment. Then Oliver’s engineering brain got busy creating the series of Food ForEver™ Growing Systems (FFGS) that are available on this website. Now we are ready to share everything we’ve learned with you. Our goal is to make “Aquaponics” a household word in the US just like it is in Australia.
We are entrepreneurs who are in a unique position to be two of the best teachers of this technology on the planet. Grace is a trained Teacher with a Lifetime California teaching credential and has worked as an advertising copywriter in her past; and Oliver is an Aerospace Engineer. Our two talents combine to make us naturals at this business.
And even though we both consider ourselves to be urbanites, having lived most of our lives in the city, in 2006 we moved to a more rural environment and now make our home in a little high desert town above Palm Springs. “I consider myself to be an urban farmer,” says Grace. “I can’t fully express how surprised I am at my new found desire and willingness to grow my own food. I’ve made a huge paradigm shift because I truly believe it’s going to be necessary to be food independent.” On the other hand, Oliver is in his glory designing these economical food-growing systems as he meets the challenge of keeping them affordable while utilizing top of the line components. But his true engineering talent is being revealed as he designs the proprietary, space-saving, integrated farm-sized systems for Aquaponics World. “I’m so glad I can share these designs with the world so people can purchase these smaller units from us. But what’s even more exciting is growing large quantities of food using our state-of-art farm-sized system design” he said.
So here’s your opportunity to learn from us, two people who were just like you not too long ago--people who weren’t farmers but are average middle-class Americans who have learned to grow our own food. And we’re eager to share every step of this process with you because Aquaponics USA is so much more than a business,
it’s a movement toward
being FOOD INDEPENDENT!
There was a time when we were in the same boat as most Americans when it came to this ingenious way to grow both fish and vegetables side by side in a cross-linked system. It was a complete mystery; but one we found to be very intriguing. So we decided to learn everything we could about it, eventually turning aquaponics into a thriving business.
Aquaponics USA is creating aquaponic food-growing systems for the average American home, apartment and school; and there’s no doubt this self sustaining food growing technology is about to take the world by storm. It’s kind of like when the automobile first came on the scene--hardly anyone had one. Now there are two cars in every garage. Well, it won’t be long before the cars get parked in the driveway to make room for a Food Forever™ Growing System by Aquaponics USA. Standard track home porches make great greenhouses too.
“Everyone will soon realize they’ve got to have one,” said Grace, recently. “And we’ll all look back at these last fifty years of depending solely on manufactured food as the dark ages because we’ll realize how important fresh, organic, pesticide, GMO and nanotechnology-free food really is to our health, well-being and peace of mind.”
Not depending on gigantic corporations to feed us and instead taking responsibility for sustaining ourselves is the wave of the future--one that curls back into the past when great grandma and grandpa grew their own food. “People will feel their aquaponic system is the most important thing in their household,” Oliver said. “Because they’ll see the difference in their own and their children’s faces once they’ve eaten real food for a while.” This is what being FOOD INDEPENDENT is all about, taking responsibility for the most important thing in life--our FOOD.
Aquaponics USA is also the Proof-Of-Concept, Working Model for our farm-sized aquaponics systems company, Aquaponics World. Watch the videos below to see what’s happening in our Proof-Of-Concept Greenhouse and Growroom. Return to this page to see all the incredible innovations we come up with for both our backyard systems, school and farm-sized systems.
We’ve divided our 2009 Video Greenhouse Tour into 3 parts. The first part focuses on the outside of the greenhouse and talks about the construction and environmental controls. The second part focuses on the inside of the greenhouse and describes the food-growing systems. The third part shows and talks about several of the plants that were growing in the greenhouse. Sit back, relax and enjoy your Tour.
Grace Sylke & Oliver Duffy
are the Founders of Aquaponics USA
The patch of dirt in the photo is where their 28’ Greenhouse now sits.
This Video describes what was growing in our Aquaponics USA Greenhouse, introduces our newly constructed Growroom and our Food Forever™ Growing Systems and debuts our fun new Lead-In and Lead-Out Video Format, which you’ll be seeing in all of our videos. (Video made in October of 2011)
Click the viewing arrows below to watch our latest videos, “Aquaponics USA Travels to Tucson Parts 1 & 2”. These Videos show the process of building, installing and testing three of our FFGS-40 Systems in three elementary Schools in Tucson, AZ. We are now using a standard lead-in and lead-out that you’ll find familiar if you’re following us. We would love to get feedback on this video from our viewers as we’re planning on making a lot more of them; and we want them to be as informative and enjoyable as they can be. You can go directly to our Aquaponics USA TV Channel to leave comments and Subscribe to our Videos.
This Video is Part 1 of a series called “Aquaponics USA Travels to Tucson, Arizona” and it features the building, installation and testing of one of three of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems, the FFGS-40, that went into the Davis Bilingual Elementary School in the inner city of Tucson, Arizona. It won’t be long before we can shoot videos of the children in the school using their Food Forever™ Growing System to grow fish and vegetables. So stay tuned.
This Video is Part 2 of the new series called “Aquaponics USA Travels to Tucson, Arizona” and it features the building, installation and testing of one of the three of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems, the FFGS-40, that went into the Manzo Elementary School in the inner city of Tucson, Arizona. We installed three of the same systems in these videos; but each installation took a different configuration and a different aspect of the installation in captured in these videos. If you watch all three installations carefully (Part 3 is coming soon), you will get a real good idea of how these systems were installed.
Aquaponics USA is a fast growing young company dedicated to the exploration, product creation and education around one of the most amazing self sustaining food technologies on the planet today-- Aquaponics. Be sure to go check out all of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems.
Watch our Aquaponics USA
TV
Channel
Beware, You may get WET!
View our latest Video (which is always on the top). Then check out the Three Part Educational Video of our Greenhouse made in 2009. Watch our Food Forever™ growing systems in action as they grow food in a Greenhouse and a Growroom.