Mutu\u2019s Italian Kitchen<\/a> in Durango, said the availability of organic, locally grown produce has him interested in tomatoes, basil and other produce from Organic Family Farms.<\/p>\n\u201cThey have the ability to produce year-round and to produce earlier than we\u2019ve been able to get local produce before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In their inaugural year, the Coulons aim to have their first crop of tomatoes by May. Previously, Newton said it\u2019s been late July or August before he\u2019s been able to get his hands on a substantial amount of locally grown tomatoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to serve organic produce, and even better, we\u2019re able to serve products that are local and keep the money in the local economy,\u201d Newton said.<\/p>\n
Some 250,000 gallons of water are in Organic Family Farms\u2019 aquaponic system, and Jeff Coulon said they add about 150 gallons of water to the system daily to replace water lost to the plants and to evaporation.<\/p>\n
In total, he said the closed-loop aquaponic system, which uses the plants to filter the fish-manure rich water so it can be cleansed, oxygenated and sent back to the fish tanks, uses only about 10 percent of the water that would be needed to irrigate a similar sized garden.<\/p>\n
Coulon said the closest commercial aquaponic system that he knows of is in Texas. He estimates it will take seven growing seasons to recoup his investment in the aquaponic system.<\/p>\n
The family began building their system in June, and the first seeds were planted in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the fish for Valentine\u2019s Day. It was our Valentine\u2019s Day present,\u201d Tammy Coulon said.<\/p>\n
The fledgling operation remains an all-family affair.<\/p>\n
The Coulons\u2019 daughter, Lenora Wheeler, and her husband, Shawn Wheeler, are partners.<\/p>\n
Tammie Hutson, Jeff Coulon\u2019s sister, handles the marketing and bookkeeping. Even the Wheelers\u2019 son Dravon, 9, helps out after school.<\/p>\n
parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tammy Coulon open aquaponic farm south of Cortez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[281,13,60,3270],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-94723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county","tag-organic-foods"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94723"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=94723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}