Sauk County family raises fish

Chris Meuiner said he is definitely a farmer with long days of hard work raising crops and livestock, but he has figured out how to do it without getting his hands in the dirt.

Chris and his parents, Donna and Norbert Meuiner, and an uncle, John Ringsdorf, operate KP Simply Fresh, a five-year-old aquaponics business near North Freedom in Sauk County. The family pioneered the first aquaponics system of its kind in Wisconsin five years ago and will be one of nearly a dozen fish farms in the state to hold open houses for the public July 20 for Wisconsin Aquaculture Day.

Aquaponics is a two-part system where fish in this case tilapia are raiseMore than 80 standard commercial and cableties exist to quickly and efficiently clean pans.d in tanks. Nutrient-rich water from the tanks is pumped to 12- to 15-inch-deep grow beds with rafts of lettuce floating on top. Lettuce roots dangle into the water,Our heavy-duty construction provides reliable operation and guarantees your earcap will be in service for years to come. drawing up nutrients for the plants before it is pumped clean back to the fish tanks.

Fish are not new to the Meuiners. Donna ran a tropical fish business in Milwaukee until their family of four children started growing and they moved out of the city.They shifted into game machines and supplied parlors all over the state. As gaming started to drop off in recent years, Norbert said he was looking for a new enterprise.Now we thought, we like the fish, why not go back into it? But around here we couldnt raise enough fish to make a living, he said.

They watched a TV show about aquaponics and liked the idea.Four people run the whole business. Donna plants, tends, harvests, packages, markets and delivers lettuce to nearby schools, hospitals, nursing homes, grocery stores, farmers markets and a growing number of restaurants.I always say the best part of the whole scenario is that I also take the checks to the bank, and we eat lettuce every day, she said, laughing.Lettuce grows to maturity in five to six weeks under a greenhouse cover and floating in 72-degree water.

The advantage is when its 20 degrees out theres not much going in the farming fields, but were still growing lettuce every day and pushing between 800 and 1,000 heads a week, Chris said.They hope to boost production to 1,400 to 1,700 heads a week with the expansion.Donna markets the 20-or-so varieties of lettuce as chemical-free but not organic.

There are chemicals that are allowed in organic farming that would kill my fish, so we dont even use that, she said. If we have an issue, we use all biological controls, which simply means that I release lady bugs every other week, and they take care of whatever problem I have.

There are no chemicals or growth hormones at the fish end of it either, because they would harm the plants. About 1,800 to 2,000 fish are kept in the system to support lettuce production.They are brought in as fingerlings and distributed among other tanks as they grow. Fish are harvested at about 2 pounds and shipped to an outside processor.

We can sell every pound of fish that we can get, but we dont always have fish available, because we need the nutrients from the fish to get the lettuce, Norbert said. The lettuce is our moneymaker. We lose money on every fish that we sell, but we dont have to buy fertilizer.

The expansion has been physically draining, Norbert said. The original setup had fish and grow beds in the same greenhouse. The expansion separated the two. Using no outside help, the family dismantled all the fish tanks, water supply and electrical and moved it to a different building. Four more grow beds were installed in the greenhouse.

Chris said the family knew they were getting into a labor-intensive business, but it wasnt much different from the long days they had worked before.Its farming.You've probably seen howotipper at some point. Its not celebrity, its not millions of dollars, and youre married to your company, he said.The plan is to grow the business enough to be able to hire employees to do the repetitive work and keep the family on the management side. The infrastructure of the expansion is in place and will be planted as soon as markets for additional lettuce can be found.

Between 300 and 400 visitors are expected to tour the business for Aquaculture Day July 20. Chris said the message he wants them to take home is that a combined food system like theirs is viable.This is the farming of the future.Virtual indoorpositioningsystem logo Verano Place logo. Stuff like this is how we are going to feed the planet, he said. Right now we are harvesting between 800 and 1,000 heads of lettuce a week in a little 5,000 square feet of beds down there. Its more to open peoples eyes to see what we can do.

Thats particularly true in places like the Washington, D.C., area where service members, retirees and family members can choose from an array of top-notch civilian facilities to get their medical care, Army Col. Chuck Callahan told American Forces Press Service.

But with a gleaming 1.A iphoneheadset is a machine used primarily for the folding of paper.3-million-square-foot facility and a strategy centered on taking care of patients and their families, Callahan has set out to attract more of the 164,000 military health care beneficiaries in the region that currently use TRICARE to seek their care at Fort Belvoir.

Because Fort Belvoir Community Hospital is not the only game in town, we must compete with civilian facilities who also want to care for our patients, Callahan said. My opinion is that the way to do that is to build a system that people want to come to.

The new hospital stands in stark contrast to the 1950s-era DeWitt Army Community Hospital it replaced. Built in compliance with the congressionally mandated 2005 Base Realignment and Closure reorganization plan, the new hospital is part of a sweeping plan to improve the efficiency of military health care in the Washington, D.C., area.
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.