CASE STUDY 2: SHED SCIENCE

Dan Kirkpatrick, 55, says biology is his religion. A truck driver by trade, he spends much of his leisure time in a cramped shed in the backyard of the house he shares with his parents, tinkering with his ecosystems. He’s got an aquaponics system that uses goldfish and grows aquarium plants, as well as a tank of crayfish, several worm composters and a colony of fruit fly larvae. “You get fruit flies and spiders going and no other bugs can take over,” explains Kirkpatrick, who lives in Burlington. “It’s funny … I drink beer out of clear bottles. You have to decide how many fruit flies in there is too many.” He sees all of these ecosystems as a way to turn anything biological, from fallen leaves to table scraps, into food. But after some misadventures with tilapia and no solid plan to grow produce, he’s not there just yet. “It’s mostly just a hobby.” First, he set up the worm composter. Then he moved on to raising fish and crayfish in a plastic bin on his deck, but those were mostly eaten by a raccoon. Now he’s onto aquaponics and built the shed for that purpose. Inside, Kirkpatrick has one large cubic tub sitting above another in a wooden frame. The bottom one is full of very large goldfish and various errant plants. Water from that basin flows into a filtering bin off to the side, then is pumped up to the plant tub above. Algae covers almost everything; a reason Kirkpatrick cautions against using glass aquariums. “Tupperware is way cheaper and unless you’re going to scrub the glass every day, you’re not going to see through the side of it anyway,” he said. He also cautions against tilapia, saying they produce much more waste than goldfish and need to be fed more frequently. “They were impressive when you’re feeding them, though. If you really want to see them go nuts, throw an English muffin in there and they’re like piranhas.”