Aquaponics

This is Luke, cafe owner, chef, Baker & gardener

Luke has over 15 years experience in the hospitality trade working in all different establishments having connections with other chefs & food suppliers. Working with people from all levels & sizes of establishments. He has also setup a small aquaponics system in his back garden and worked on perfecting this system over the past 4 years.

Louise (Luke's partner) works partime at the cafe with me & looks after our garden and small aquaponics system as well, she also has experience as a chef and is not shy of hard work. She is also great with people young & old.

Both very hard working we dig, build, plant, water, crop and do everything else involved in nurturing a little seed into a beautiful vegetable that appears on your plate.

We currently run a successful cafe operating out of a tennis club in Bedford we opened in February 2020 and despite covid restrictions and having to close during the various lockdowns our buisness is successful and we are now ready to move onto the next step of our plan which is to start a small holding including an aquaponics setup. We have already found a well positioned 3 acre plot, that we can start using once we have obtained funding.

We are passionate about fresh fruit & vegetables. Not only do we want to eat healthy fresh and local produce that is good for the environment we also want our friends and families to eat healthily. We also want people in bedfordshire, & maybe wider, to be able to choose to eat fresh produce that is grown locally and to know how their food is grown.

We also want to adopt a regenerative approach to the agri-food business as we think this is the future tech that is needed for the expected population rise and rise in food needs in general. Aquaponics grows food twice as fast and in a tenth of the space meaning as well as producing sustainable protein rich fish. In as short a time as 9 months the fish we start with can be harvested and while the fish are growing their waste feeds the various plants we will be growing in the system. We will also have soil grown trees and a wild meadow to attract solitary bees and other pollinators.

We will not use artificial fertilisers all nutrients will come from the aquaponics system including the solid waste that is filtered out. As well as this we will create our own compost with anything we can't eat or sell.

The money raised will be used to build the aquaponics system within three poly tunnels, the media beds plus the grow media (either inert gravel or airated clay pebbles) , NFT (nutrient film technique) & purchase a two wind turbines solar panels & battery storage to run the whole operation. We will also collect rain water in tanks & filter this for drinking water. We also have plans to have a mini bio digester linked to a toilet that will create natural gas to cook with and heat te poly tunnels in the colder months all of these systems are easily scalable once established & completely self efficient.

We plan to sell our produce from the cafe, a local refill store & local markets we will also be making other products from the food we produce - jams, chutneys, smoked fish and many more tasty treats.

We aim to raise rainbow trout in our aquaponics setup whilst growing vegetables in various media beds & NFT vertical towers meaning we can grow up to 10x the amount of produce twice as fast. We are also planting fruit trees & edible hedgerows around the perimeter of the land as we feel this is good for pollinators and also a good way to help clean our air.

Aquaponics is the most environmental way to grow food and dates back hundreds of years. It doesn't need any chemicals or fertilizers and reduces water usage by up to 97%, compared to traditional horticulture. Not only that, but it will it give us an amazingly productive means of growing on a small area that will bring in enough income for us to be financially independent. It will also enable us to eventually do classes and teach others the benefits of these systems.

The fish will be housed in trench ponds under the growing media beds, the water in these tanks will pumped through a filter made from an IBC tank and then pumped to the media beds & NFT systems, the water fed to these systems will then return to the fish tanks & start all over again. This will make the best use of the space we have, also meaning the temperature of the water won't fluctuate due to the thermodynamics of the soil surrounding the fishes enclosure.

Any solid waste we filter out of the system will be mixed with mulches and spread around the bases of the trees we are already planting so nothing goes to landfill!

We will also not be using plastic packaging and use Eco friendly products as much as physically possible. We will recycle IBC tanks into water storage tanks and filters, making use of waste plastic products wherever possible too. All the plastic we do have to use will be recycled at the end of its lifespan.

We would also like to have visitors on site including schools & people suffering from mental health problems as gardening in any form is a good skill to learn, is known to bring people together & help with mental wellbeing.

We would need to employ more staff once we are up and running for the day to day running of the farm as well as at the cafe & any market stalls we begin to operate from to help sell the produce.