While we've been enjoying home grown lettuce, kale, and mint for several weeks now, we finally had our first quail meat, eggs and catfish this week, not quite all to plan, however. This is why food storage capability is important.

Floods and Drains

With all the work to be done outside, my basement AP system has been a little neglected, so the other night I decided to add a few gallons of water to bring up the level of the 80gal sump. My wife had been using all my 5gal buckets, so I improvised and used the hose.

Big no-no. After a 7 yr old tantrum, supper, guitar practice, a trip to the store, and sealing my wife's cichlid tank, the oh-shit moment hit me, just as I was about to head upstairs to bed.

When I got back down there, the water in the fish tank was a color I haven't seen in a long time (more bluish than brownish), and very clear. There was also water all over the unfinished part of the basement. I vacuumed up at least 30 gallons. I am fortunate that there is a drain in my workshop next to the water heater (the workshop is next to the Hab Lab), or it could well have been much worse.

One of my footlong channel cats was also swimming sideways, apropos the heavy dosing of chlorine, no doubt. By the time I ended up shop-vaccing the bulk of the water up aound midnight, he was dead. Fortunately, all the other fish (17 tilapia, 1 goldfish, 3 other cats, and two plecos) withstood the trauma, and are doing fine 2 days later. The dead cat I cleaned, and pan fried for supper last night. I had forgotten how sweet the flavor of catfish was.

During cleanup, I discovered that my growbed pump had stopped working. This was actually good news, as it meant that I didn't have chlorinated water running through the media. I temporarily diverted the fish tank drain hose to run directly into the grow bed. Put in a replacement pump from the local hydroponics store yesterday. In the process of doing that, I apparently bumped the drain elbow on one GB tank and after I went upstairs it started splashing out of the sump on the drain cycles. I came back to another flood to clean up.

I am considering putting the GB pump on a timer to slow the cycles down a bit, but one thing I am most definitely going to do is install a flood alarm with an SMS push.

Farming in Suburbia

We had started out with 11 quail, 2 or 3 weeks old, and kept them in the basement, since they still required a heat lamp. Before going on vacation I made a recirculating watering system for them. After returning from our summer vacation, I built a rack for their cage and moved them out to our back patio. Unfortunately, about this time, the 7 males were starting to crow, which for coturnix quail is little more than a squawk, but at 0500 can be somewhat annoying. Neighbors complained. Next morning we were processing 7 six week old quail before work, and we had them for supper two nights ago.



The hens started laying this week as well. Not sure how many of the 4 hens are actually laying yet, but we've been averaging 2 eggs a day since they started.

I wouldn't mind having one or two males for breeding purposes, but it's really not feasible living where we do, at least not with the current set up.