Fish Farming

I've been reading a book called The Handbook of Self-Sustainability.  It's a British book, which isn't terribly obvious but shows through every once in awhile in spelling and references.  One of the things mentioned in the book is fish farming.  Apparently, fish is one of the most economical ways to make use of your farm land.  You get more meat for the amount of food going into the fish.  It's recommended that you raise vegetarian species rather than carnivorous ones since vegetarian species can eat kitchen and garden scraps and you don't need to buy meat proteins to feed.  That book recommends a large pond where the fish grow and a small "stewpond" near the house where eating-weight fish can be moved for easy access when you want them.

Ba'al and I have been doing some research as a result.  Not only do we we have to keep in mind the type of water and climate, we also have the limitations of kashrut.  If we get the money together for a fish pond, I think we'll probably raise small mouth bass and maybe walleye as well.  We've been wanting to have a grist mill on the property as well and if we combine that with a large fish pond, we can keep the water moving by having it go through a sluiceway, turn a water wheel, and then pipped back up to the main pond.  That helps take care of the potential mosquito problem, by keeping the water moving.  That's an advantage to raising small mouth bass; they eat surface bugs and larvae.

As far as feed, small mouth bass are basically vegetarian.  They'll eat beer and wine wastes (good since I'm interested in wine making and Ba'al makes beer), kitchen scrapes, garden wastes, and so on.  I'm not worried about the cost of feeding the fish.  I'm not worried about raising way more than we can use because I can easily sell fish locally.  What I AM worried about is the cost of putting in the infrastructure.  I can see fish being a good, safe, economical source of protein for my family but it won't be the first thing we commit to.  Like it or not, putting in the fish pond and pipe system we envision will be expensive and to start, chickens and beef will be cheaper in start up costs.  But I like the idea of doing fish and if we wait until we have our land certified organic (definitely one of the long term goals) our fish would definitely be safer in terms of contaniments than practically any other fish on the market.

This self-sustainability thing is going in directions I never thought it would.