Is It a “Fish Farm” if I Stock the Creek?

Now that the weather’s turned officially cold and the wood stove is going all day and night, there’s time to reflect upon the year and make new plans for the future. I’m still working on how to get “free range” chickens that won’t get eaten by the many foxes and coyotes that haunt our cove, sans the serious fencing we can’t afford. Also working on finding some metal fence poles for the garden fence through our local Freecycle network, nobody’s willing to come off any so far.

I find my mind once again drifting toward renting a backhoe for a week and dredging down in the creek so I’ll have a set of three tiers of pond that I can stock with rainbow trout. So I’ve been looking into the whole aquaculture thing, the issues with pollution and antibiotics and quality of feed, cost of fingerlings from the state, etc. What kind of engineering do I have to do to my creek? What kind of pollution controls? Who gets to police my little trap-falls?

After two days’ worth of homework, I’ve decided that my plan doesn’t fall under the regulatory purview of the state beyond their “stocking rivers and creeks” section. Yes, since it’s private land I’ll have to pay for the fingerlings, but because these pools won’t be anything but slightly-dammed hold-backs the size of my back deck, there should be no issues about waste pollution or anything like that. I will probably need a permit from the state in order to get the fingerlings, but once they’ve determined the operation is so minor as to not really qualify as “commercial,” it shouldn’t cost that much. Sell a few dozen fish a year.

I’ll put fingerlings in the top pool, twice as many as I figure will live long enough to make it to the second pool after a year. When it comes time to transfer with 6-8 inches long. I figure the second tier will be big enough to hold about a hundred small fish comfortably without moving them to cannibalism, and I’ll feed them regularly with quality food.

The third pool will hold full grown trout until they’re ready for market. Now, you (or I) can cook up a fine meal of fresh trout from 6 or 7-inchers, and I’m pretty sure I will. But to sell to local eateries and B&Bs, I’m thinking bigger specimens. That’s a cash crop as well as occasional protein for the family.

The price varies according to where you sell the fish, and how you sell it. I’d not be farming enough to be a big supplier, but there are some fine eateries that already buy whatever organic herbs, veggies, sauces and such that I can produce. A 12″ trout should give two filets of about a pound apiece. This means the facility can offer a a total of four meals, each with 8-oz fresh rainbow filet (plus rice and whatever veggies) from each foot-long trout. Currently, $15.00 per fish isn’t unreasonable even wholesale, as trout is an expensive item in these already-pricey establishments. An 18″ fish could easily go for $20.00, as it will provide two more 8-oz. filets. If I have to do the filet-ing, it’s gonna cost ‘em more! Even though I can put the leavings in the Pogie-Matic (blender) and compost separately for great organic fish fertilizer for the garden…

For whole trout dishes (grilled, top closed in sassafras smoke is the most amazing thing EVER), most restaurants prefer trout in the 8″ range, and these can go for around $10.00 per fish. If I stock new fingerlings every spring, I should have a good supply of the 8-inchers by the second year, and expect to garner approximately $360 per year on this cash crop if I only sell 3 dozen fish, plus however many big ones I can turn into 8-oz filets and sell for $5 apiece (~$30 per fish). And I get the fertilizer, which will save on gardening expense. On a scale of having about a dozen ‘extra’ large trout to filet every year, that’s another $360. Minus costs averaged out, I should be able to clear $700 a year on fish, plus have a ready supply for dinners and entertaining here at the homestead! It’s always nice when your land and labor can return cash for things you can’t grow at home. Every little bit helps!

All this (the herbs and the fish) cost money to produce, even if it’s the homestead that’s doing most of the actual work, it’s till my money for seeds, cultivation, fish food, fingerlings, and my back that takes the abuse. Many people would think this is definitely NOT worth the trouble, but I’ll be gardening anyway, and dipping my toes in the creek whenever possible – there might as well be fish in it. If your dream is a self-sufficient homestead – as mine is – you don’t need all that much income. Just enough.

Links:

Mother Earth: Small-Scale Trout Farming
USTFA: Farm-Raised Trout
NCSU: Trout
BNET: A true fish tale

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