United Nations' World Water Day - March 22

I've known about Earth Day (4/22) for years.

Somehow, World Water Day hadn't made it to my radar screen. But the rest of the world has been concerned about water use for decades.

The United Nations theme for this year is Water and Food Security - crazy important. A topic that is very close to my heart.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find an embeddable version of their instructive animation. But because I think this should be better known, I converted content from the UN website into a youtube video. I'm not trying to raise funds or make money off any of this, so I should be in the clear... Below is the final result, with background music written by Little Red King, appropriately named "Rain in the Desert."



So what are you planning to do for World Water Day on March 22nd?

January Update - Enclosing the Greenhouse

It's been a busy fall, what with creation of the Aquaponics Association (yours truly is Secretary of the US Chapter). But I finally got a chance during the holiday break to enclose my greenhouse. Not much growing going on, but the fish are all doing fine, even through the nasty cold snap that swept through the eastern United States in early January.

I shot a bit of video on January 1st, when it was cool (55 degrees) but sunny. With the greenhouse enclosed, it got up to 83 degrees inside. Nuts! Slipping into the greenhouse was a bit like getting off the plane in a tropical locale.

For the roof of the greenhouse I simply have a double thickness of 3.5 mil plastic - though I don't have this inflated, there is still insulation value from the small air pockets between the two sheets. This is a time when "rumpled" helps.

I've been wanting to install some method of measuring temperatures, but the Stout family has collectively decided to be fiscally responsible in 2012. So no impulse purchases of environmental monitoring equipment for Meg. I've gotten a kickstarter project approved which would let me ask the collective crowd to contribute to the monitoring experiment (for prizes!). I'll see about going live on that project in the next week or so.

Anyway, here's video of the state of things on January 1st, starting with a snippet of video from September to explain how I get 10 foot wide sheeting to cover a greenhouse.