I attended Nelson & Pade’s Aquaponics workshop in Montello, WI from October 12th – 15th. It was a great experience with 3 solid days of non-stop Aquaponics education. After leaving I felt like I went from a basic understanding of Aquaponics to a being knowledgeable on not only Aquaponics, but several other subjects. Not being from an agricultural background, I also learned a lot about controlled environment agriculture, greenhouses, GAP, bio-security, chemistry and fish biology. It was also nice to just get some hands on with the fish, plants and equipment as well meet a fine group of diverse people from around the states.
Nelson & Pade do make very good, but somewhat pricey systems for everything from the family size to the full on commercial system capable of feeding a small town. They are far and away the market leader in supplying Aquaponics systems with well over 170,000 square feet producing fish and veggies. They don’t do the hard sell which is nice, and John and Rebecca are authentic down to earth people who know a ton about growing food.
Here are some pictures from my visit.
