Hello. My name is Deanna. I am the head counselor for Nana Camp at Deatonmanor. As part of our educational curriculum, I assisted Nana, the Camp Director, Poppy, the Camp Gopher, and Dana, a camp mom, in taking our five campers to an aquaculture farm. Poppy, the Camp Gopher, arranged our trip.
An aquaculture farm is a farm that raises fish. The farm we visited today is one of the only farms of its kind and is pioneering the way for more. They are growing salt water striped bass and flounder for food consumption, as well as koi and goldfish for decorative tanks and ponds. Realizing an increased demand for “seafood” because of our overfishing and polluting our waters, the farm owners are working with two state colleges to develop the farming program. It is truly cutting edge technology.
Here’s the amazing thing:
The aquafarm used to be a chicken farm.
Many chicken farmers in our area have been laid off (for lack of better terminology) over the past couple of years. Their livelihood has been taken from them and they have been left scrambling to find work. Such was the case with the owner of the aquafarm. He found himself with a farm equipped with chicken houses but with no chickens to grow. He looked at this very difficult situation and decided to take a creative risk. He decided to convert his chicken houses into fish houses.
The conversion has been long and slow. It has been met with error and complication. The farm is still growing and changing. But it is there. And it is pioneering the way for many more farms of its sort.
When life takes your chickens, grow fish.
That was our lesson today at Nana Camp, where education and laughter are important, games are played, dominoes are knocked down, geodes are cracked, jelly beans are eaten, Fantasia is watched, forts are built, and all campers are asleep by 10:30pm.
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