Turn a Broken Down Backyard Pool Into A Compact Farm

We created GardenPool.org to document our journey of converting an old backyard swimming pool in to a way to feed our family and live more self-sufficiently. When we purchased our first home in Mesa, AZ on October of 2009, it came with a large, empty, and run-down pool. Rather than spending thousands of dollars in fixing the pool or having it filled with fill dirt we decided to design an inexpensive & self-sufficient urban greenhouse. Initially, we had anticipated self-sufficiency by 2012 but we achieved our goal by mid-2010. Our family gets about 8 fresh eggs a day, unlimited tilapia fish, organic fruit, veggies, and herbs 365 days a year. _GardenPool

The GP combines:

• solar power – harnessing and storing the sun’s energy
• water conservation – using less water and recycling waste water
• poultry farming – raising chickens
• aquaculture – raising tilapia fish
• hydroponic gardening – growing fruits, veggies, & herbs without soil
• organic horticulture – using natural methods to control garden pests
• aquaponics – the symbiotic cultivation of produce and fish in a recirculating hydroponic environment.
• biofiltration – natural water filtration method using biochemistry and duckweed.

_GP.org

If you have a backyard pool you would like to convert into a permanent food source, watch the video and visit the website.

Here is a bonus concept to think about: Scientists at MIT are perfecting new cheap catalysts for converting any kind of water into hydrogen or oxygen -- using electricity from a photovoltaic array. With hydrogen and oxygen, you can power a home fuel cell which can provide your home power, heat, and hot water -- even pure drinking water from brackish or polluted water..

Combine the two ideas -- the permanent micro-farm, with the make-your-own hydrogen and oxygen for a home fuel cell -- et, voila! You are halfway toward self-sufficiency. You may want to locate in an arid part of the world where the sun shines regularly, at not too high a latitude, so as to assure plenty of sunlight year round.

The technologies are coming which will make quasi self-sufficiency much cheaper and easier for almost anyone. Keep your eyes open.

High Alcohol Tolerance in Yeast Yields Rocket Powered Homebrew

Every beer homebrewer likes to tweak his brew from time to time, to maximise certain flavours or effects. Now scientists from the US and South Korea have found 4 genes in yeast that can be tweaked to create a highly alcohol-tolerant yeast. This means that instead of brewing a homebrew with 6% or 8% ethanol, you will soon be able to brew a beer at home with 30% or more ethanol. With yeast that powerful, I may have to get better at making wine and cider!

Researchers from S. Korea and the US have developed a strain of yeast with increased alcohol tolerance that could lead to more efficient and economical production of alcohol-based biofuels.

Yeast produces alcohol through microbial fermentation; however, at a certain concentration, the biofuels that are being created become toxic to the yeast used in making them, said Yong-Su Jin, an assistant professor of microbial genomics in the U of I Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and a faculty member in the U of I’s Institute for Genomic Biology. “Our goal was to find a gene or genes that reduce this toxic effect.”

The team worked with Saccharomyces cerevisiae to identify four genes (MSN2, DOG1, HAL1, and INO1) that improve tolerance to ethanol and iso-butanol when they are overexpressed.

...Overexpression of any of the four genes remarkably increased ethanol tolerance, but the strain in which INO1 was overexpressed elicited the highest ethanol yield and productivity, with increases of more than 70% for ethanol volume and more than 340% for ethanol tolerance when compared to the control strain.

According to Jin, the functions of the identified genes are very diverse and unrelated, which suggests that tolerance to high concentrations of iso-butanol and ethanol might involve the complex interactions of many genetic elements in yeast.

For example, some genes increase cellular viability at the expense of fermentation. Others are more balanced between these two functions. Identification of these genes should enable us to produce transportation fuels from biomass more economically and efficiently. It’s a first step in understanding the cellular reaction that currently limits the production process.

—Yong-Su Jin

Further study of these genes should increase alcohol tolerance even further, and that will translate into cost savings and greater efficiency during biofuel production, he added. _GCC

Sure, they talk about alcohol as biofuel, but we really know what this is about, right (wink, wink)? Take a girl out for a drink, pour her a glass of beer, and before you know it she's become quite agreeable. But eventually the girls will catch on to what we've done, then we'll have to come up with another approach.

She Doesn't Need You

A nice and easy cross-genre performance with a pleasant blend of instruments and vocals.

The peaks and valleys of a long, active love life will take you beyond your limits. If you are able to incorporate the lessons learned without indulging in too much bitterness, you will be better for it.