 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hi, welcome aboard and happy Halloween to everybody. Here we are at the Think Tech Hawaii, and I have my co-host, Natalie. She's a farm manager at Olamana Gardens in my right hand and left hand person. That's it. She's double-handed. Well, we've got some exciting stuff to share with you today. First off, news-wise, current events is you have to November the 6th. That gives you about six days from now to sign up to go down to the Big Island for an all-day conference. It's at the NELHA, N-E-L-H-A. And that is that big aquaponics aquaculture set up at the end of the airport runway. So if you land at Kona, Kailua Kona on the Big Island, you will see it when you fly in. That's all those big algae tanks and sorts of that going down. And what's special about it is this is the first of a series of planning conferences getting ready for 2020. We're going to host an international conference here. Now, Natalie and I got to participate with Dr. Benny Rahn. That was about two years, three years ago. And we did the Worldwide Conference and a Pacific Conference. And when they flew in people from Israel, from Germany, from China, Madagaster, from all over the world, they flew them in here and there were about 350 of us attended that. And Natalie and I got to be presenters at it. So we're going to be flying down. This is coming up. The event itself is on November 14th, I do believe. And for information on it, you can go to our web page or they have their own web page advertising it. And Natalie will pull up the information for me. That'd be great. And it's only $50. And when I say only $50, it goes from 8.30 in the morning to 7.00 at night. The feed you lunch, the feed you dinner, right? And you're getting to meet with all the movers and shakers. And so the title of the thing is for Blue Hawaii. And it's basically how to promote aquaculture and aquaponics in Hawaii. And down in Kailua Kona, the big thing is the offshore fishing, where they hang the nets down in the water and then they graze the fish out in the open ocean. And at this NEHA station there, Natalie and I have gone down. We go down about every six months or so. And that's where they breed the little babies. So they breed the little babies up and then they move them out into the ocean and they grow them out. So every time we go to one of these conferences, one of the things you get is a free tour of the place. So we get to see the abalone growing. These are million-dollar operations. So it's a real treat to go. And so for the $50, I mean, there are some people who spend that on a dinner alone. But this is an all-day conference and really looking forward to it. And while we're down on the big island, what else are we going to be doing, Natalie? Yes. So we're going to be doing a workshop. Glenn has an airlift pump, or what we do different in aquaponics at the YWAM University of the Nations. Yeah, right there in Kailua, Kona. So that's about a 1,200 student body there at that college. It's a four-year college. They specialize in training missionaries. And people want to go out and be a missionary for whatever their religion is. When they go out, they need to know how to conduct themselves, what to do. But one of the things they found out, whatever book you're carrying, being in a Bible or whatever the source of your foundation of your religion, when these missionaries go out, they need to have practical skills in that they need to be of a benefit to the community. Fix a roof, fix a solar cell, do aquaponics systems, et cetera. So they have courses in what they call applied engineering. So if you are a missionary and you show up in a community, you can do something more than just preach out of or share your message. There's something to a practical, physical aspect to it. And so we've been going down there for several years. And we're going to be doing workshops down there on the 15th and 16th on the college campus. And you can go to our webpage at www.allamontagardens.com and you can sign up for them. It's great stuff. And they have a really nice aquaponics system at this University of Nation. And YWAM, by the way, stands for Youth on a Mission. And Will and Young. And so I'd say anyway, they're really cool bunch of people. I met these people over on Kauai after Hurricane Niki. They sent about 40 or 50 people over there and we built a camp for them. And they went out and volunteered in the community. Everything from tarping houses to food kitchens, the whole thing. And so a great bunch of people to work with. And it's kind of funny when you meet them, you start getting postcards. They go to Russia, they go to Israel, they go to India. So they go all over the world. So it's a passport to travel. It reminds me very much out at BYU with the Mormons. When you pull in, they have a series of flags around a circle where you drive around. And I'm going to paraphrase it, but basically there's a big sign there. And it says, you come here to learn, you leave to serve. And that is it. So what they're trying to do is teach people things that they can take out to the world on a very practical level. And that's where we went down to with Master Cho. When he had his first Korean natural farming seminar here in the big island. In Hilo? Yes, in Hilo. And we spent the week with him in Hilo. And then we went on farm tours. For two days we toured farms. Yes. And that was one of the places that we was able to go and see what they're doing there. Now keep in mind, we're south of Hilo, we're down in the Puna area. And they were hoping to have 50 people show up. Somebody did some fundraising, got a grant about $10,000 to bring this Master Cho over from South Korea. And he came there to do it. We not only had 50 people, we had 100 people, then 150 people, then 200 people. And we had to move the venue, the University of Hawaii, to their agricultural station. And they said, don't worry about it, you'll never fill it up. It can hold 300 people open there for a billion. Well, we had 350 people come. And again, it was one of these things, $50 for a workshop. And that's just, they find out if people pay 50 bucks, they show up. If you say it's free, maybe they go, maybe they don't go. But a lot of these things, the seating gets limited because they do get oversubscribed. So if you're interested in aquaponics or aquaculture, you're probably spending more for the plane ticket than you do to get into the thing. Like our plane ticket is $75 to get down there. But on the other hand, for a $50 all day conference with your peers, a lot of university people, a lot of industry people, and you get to see what's really happening. But then when we do over at the college the next day, we'll be doing the workshops over there. On Saturday. On Saturday. The actually day and a half later. We're going to be doing it there and giving tours of their facility. And that's a no charge thing to come over and take a tour of their facility. They open it to the public. But a great group of students. And there, that'll be a hands on day. And because like when we do the workshop at the nail hop, there'll be a lot of PowerPoint presentations. You'll be in an air conditioned room. Yeah, and you go out to the facilities. But when we do the workshop over at the University of Nations, that's all hands on outdoors open their pavilion. And that's because my stuff is messy. Yeah. And then we have some videos that we shot for you just to give you an idea of what we do with the air pumps and that. And if they could run those videos now, I'll share with you and narrate it for you and tell you about them and what we got going. So this is a little 12 volt battery and a little $39 bilge pump. And that is a Glenn Tourie named after yours truly. And what this does is when you have a power failure, you'll be able to take this and put it in the water and aerate it. So I have a little aquarium set on my backyard just for show and tell time. So here we are. We have this thing set up. And you can see there that when you turn on the little 12 volt pump, it pumps out in the water and it pulls the air in the top there. And that will just be sucking air. It sounds just going down, sucks the air down, blows it out. Not only does it aerate the water and wrap there next to it, but it's stirring up the whole tank. And it's just really, it's so simple. Any little battery will do the job. A normal little deep discharge battery, like the golf cart battery, will run something like this all day. Very low energy. This is a little siphon we do. I used a plastic pitcher just so I could ask you if it was pitcher perfect. But this is a water valve there on the bottom. And check this out. I'm going to fill this pitcher up with water. And when it hits the top of that stand pipe, the water is going to go down. When it goes down, it'll vortex. You see the little V of the vortex going down? That is going to suck air down. Look at all that air down at the bottom. Now what happens now if I take and put a glass or any air type thing. It could be a Coke bottle or a glass jar or anything. When I place it over the top of the stand pipe. Now watch this. I'm going to place it over the stand pipe. So I drop the glass to see the water go down. And then it breaks. Well now that pitcher will fill up and go down forever. And it will stop and start itself. And it has no moving parts. But we teach it how to do this with simple off the shelf materials. No particular machining or anything with it. You can do it with your basic hand tools. So I think you'll find that rather clever and rather interesting. Now we don't use a little plastic pitcher in our aquaponics system. We're actually in 55 gallon drums. And that'd be a four inch piece of PVC. But the principle is the same. It'll go up and down. If you do that, then you can aerate your stones in your biofilter bed. With the water goes up and pushes all the air out. And when it runs down, it sucks all new air in. So simple. This is a little compost tea maker. Now Natalie and I had to eat a lot of cheese balls just to get that container. A lot of them. But this is a simple device. The air goes in right there where I'm pointing to the hose. And then it goes up. So when the air goes up, it also pumps the water up. Then I take this sack of compost or tea maker. You stick it in there. And then that water is going to turn rich, rich round. Because you're pumping air and water through the sack. See how quickly that went brown? Now that jar will fill up so high, about two thirds full. And then it will back flush and go down into the aquarium. And what you do is you let this do it for about 24 hours. Going up down, up down, up down this rich compost tea water. And that tea water. Now I don't drink it. I do shampoo my hair every now and then. But keep it fluffy. But this is for the plants. And so depending on the quality of your compost that you have. Is how nutritious it's going to be. But you ready for this? I've been on all amount of gardens for 21 years. I have never bought fertilizer. You see the tea there? Now she'll fill up so high. And she's going to burp backwards. And this thing is going to empty down. And it's going to be quite colorful. And the whole tank, the 55 gallon down below. Is going to turn that dark brown. We'll add a little molasses syrup to it. That's to feed the bacteria that we're raising. So it's like an incubation. Basically it's like making yogurt. Okay. But it's a liquid. There it is. Now there's your back flush. And then so this thing will back flush. And your whole tank will turn brown. And then in the morning, we'll water the place. And so we'll water the lawns, all of our plants. Food plants, even ornamentals, everything. We'll get the warm tea water. But we teach again. How to make this out of, you know, any plastic jug or jar. And bingo. Oh, how you like that camera work, huh? Anybody getting seasick there? I'm sorry about that. We just shot this this afternoon. After apologizing for that, I should have hit the off button on that one. But here, hopefully we don't, we get you too seasick there. But I have to work on my editing skills. This is a 30 gallon aquarium. And we built upside down aquariums. We take the aquarium, we turn it upside down. We set it in the fish tank. The fish now come up from the bottom. And they look out at me. Now, so he can see me coming. Instead of me coming up and all of a sudden startling him and him running, he's much more comfortable because he knows I can't get to him, right? But I'll stick my hand underneath there. By the way, this is one of our air lifts. And we'll have these down at the workshop and show people how to build them. And that is a good educational thing to do. And that is just 2 psi of air. And that's pumping in about 150, 200 gallons an hour. The air comes out the top. And the water comes out the white pipe there. And it goes into the 55 gallon aquarium. And it's pumping at that rate 24 hours a day. It has no moving parts and everything. Fish can go right through the pump. Doesn't hurt them. And then the water will leave on that 2 inch pipe nice and clear out of that radio filter and go into the garden. And so the garden is lush and does really well. See how the darts rich green leaves? There's nothing lacking. This is showing how we grow duckweed and azolla. And when we do that, we're able to feed this to our fish. So it's kind of cute. I go out with this net. And then twice a day, I will net up this green and then throw it into the fish pond. And then the fish will eat it up. It's kind of like turning a horse or a cow out on a pasture. So it does it. On this, these are more air lifts. These air lifts are lifting water 24 feet high. And you see how many bubbles are in there? OK? So that super aerates the water up to saturation. And it's a known fact that at a given temperature, how much oxygen. By the way, I kicked the camera over to slow motion. I just like shooting the slow motion stuff. Just a great excuse to do it. But you see it's a pulsation kind of thing. And so this is an air lift I invented. I sent it for patents for it. But we're Natalie and I go overseas from Hong Kong to Korea to Philippines, American Samo, Fiji Tonga. American patents are no good over there. So we ended up giving our patents away to the world. We just made it public domain. And so everybody can do this. They're all PVC, no moving parts in them. Run on air, be solar powered. It's a way of the future. We've never had a client do air and go back to mechanical pumps. Once you learn to do an air lift, you're over the thing. But it's good fun to do them. You see there's two pumps there. And each pump is pumping 450 gallons an hour. So that pumps the water. We can pump water around the farm doing this. But if you want to learn how to do this, come to our workshops. We just had an open house Sunday two days ago. And it was rainy. But we had some science school teachers come. We had some ham radio operators come. And I tell you what, you have a rainy day. It weeds down the crowd size smaller. But I tell you, you get the true people out there. And so we have a lot of fun with it. So they were able to walk around. And we're able to go out there and take these things apart and show you them operating and that. So you catch a free day at all of Monica Gardens. It can be good fun. This is an aerator. We call it a bubble vacation. And what it does is the water's coming back from the sump pump in that two inch pipe. And then it dumps it into a four inch pipe. It goes underwater, makes a u-turn, comes back up. Now all those bubbles, they're all been absorbed into the water. That overflows there, comes down. I restrict it to two inches there and then into a three inch. And it does it all over again, goes to the bottom, kicks out the bubbles, and it stirs up the whole tank. And so this tank stays at about eight parts per million aeration on it. Again, there are no moving parts except for the water's moving. Somebody, I said no moving part. People say it looks like the water's moving. Yeah, but no moving parts. In other words, they're not a mechanical part going back and forth or spinning and that. So it's simple. They're doing this on shrimp farms a lot. Okay? So this is our farm at all amount of gardens. And you can see the quality of the water on it. The fish are happy. They're not running scared of you. I can literally reach and pet them. This is our newest thing. These are circular gardens. And that's a spray nozzle shooting off there. And you'll see there, those sides are the solid, but we'll drill them out like these blue tanks are here. Okay? Okay, okay. Well, we're going to take a little break here and we'll show you some more. And I'm going to show you my favorite tool of the week coming up here. So if you stand by, we'll be right back. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. So I do. I'm Ethan Allen, host of a likable science on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., I hope you'll join me for a likable science. We'll dig into the science, dig into the meat of science, dig into the joy and delight of science. We'll discover why science is indeed fun, why science is interesting, why people should care about science. They care about the research that's being done out there. It's all great. It's all entertaining. It's all educational. So I hope to join me for a likable science. Hi, Glenn from Olimonic Gardens and my co-host, Natalie Cash, from the farm. She's our farm manager and she keeps my life organized. And she reminded me to this invitation to the Hawaii Aquaculture Summit that's coming up here on November 14th. It's a little $50. November 16th. November 16th? Yes. Okay, get the date straight there. Anyway, do you have the website where they can look up the information on that? Handing for it? It's at the college. At the college? Yep. Hilo College. Yeah. Yeah. Or anybody can email me at Glenn at olimonicgardens.com. It's great. And we'll forward back over the sign-up information. But we wanted to make sure you understood that this is the first of the planning sessions and for people that are going to be presenters in that, kind of show us what they got. You might say like head talk kind of a thing and they'll be going on. But it's called the Hawaii Aquaculture Summit invitation. And it's a Hawaii Strategic Development Corporation is sponsoring this thing. Right here. So it's really good stuff. Oh. Okay. And if you got a pencil handy, Carl, K-A-R-L dot F-O-O-K-S at Hawaii dot gov. Or just go me, Glenn at Olimonic Gardens and we'll get you the information to you. And this is going to be the Worldwide Aquaculture Association. Society. Society. Coming over. This is WAAS, W-A-S. They are the big boys. They are, you know, thousands and thousands of members around the world. And normally I can't attend their conferences because they're in Israel or the South Africa or Germany or, you know, the plane ticket alone stops me from going. But here to have it in our own backyard and we'll be able to participate in it we're normally presenters at these things mostly because of the airlifts more than anything. And that, but good fun. Hey, but I promised you the tool of the week and I want to jump to that one just for a moment. When we're doing the aquaponics thing you add a lot of water on the ground when we're working and having courted tools is just not a practical thing. Natalie's always worried about being shocked. We try to use GFI receptacle. But having courts and we're dealing with kids elementary school kids and high school kids electricity and water is kind of a questionable thing. So we did the airlift so we don't have electricity in our system. So I'm certainly not going to use the electrical tool. But this is my tool of the week here. This is a little machine. It cuts the PVC pipe for me. Nice and clean. No little bits of plastic. No cranking because I could crank it but Natalie couldn't do it. It would get right to the point she couldn't quite get it all the way through. It was a bit of a chore on the hand. But these, anybody can do it. They cut nice and clean. And so we really love this little tool. What is it called now? This is called a shear because it shears the pipe right in too. You see how it comes down like this? And shears it off. And this one does everything from half inch up to two inch pipe. PVC. Naturally PVC pipe. Yeah, it doesn't work on metal pipe. Only on PVC. But it's just such a classic tool and it's one of those things we use every day. Every day. And so when we travel and we go to the workshop a lot of times we'll gift one of these to whoever hosts the workshop because quite frankly it's hard to get it home. They want it. Anyway, we wanted to share that with you. We try to each week show you some special tool that we use in aquaponics and to assemble their things. But something else that Natalie wanted to share with you today. Natalie, what is this about here? Yes, I just wanted people to know that at Allamana Gardens this is our logo that we came up with. And it's mad hot steam. And so we had some school kids on the ground. These are our t-shirts. And the little second grader from Punahoe comes up to me and she says Mr. what are you mad about? Because she saw my mad t-shirt. She thought I was mad. But the mad, what's it mean? Make a difference. We're going to make a difference in people's lives. And that's a phrase that's getting very popular. They'll have Make a Difference in Hawaii Day. They'll go out and you'll make a difference. You'll clean up a beach or clean up a taro patch or make a difference in your community. And that's what we want to do when people come out to our farm or we go to a workshop we want it to be worth their day and we want to make a difference. How about the hot? Hands on training. Right. We do very little PowerPoint presentations, right? It's better to grab a tool and learn to cut the pipe and learn to put it together sewing a rubber mallet in them. How about the steam? Yeah, steam. So it's a special part of our teaching and training. Science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math. And by adding the A it brings the other four to life. Because otherwise, studying engineering can be dry. You know, some of the sciences can be dry. The math, well, not many people really love math class, right? No. But when you do the aquaculture and the aquaponics in there or any agriculture, it gives purpose to the other four. It sure does. So Natalie and I were in the Philippines about three years ago and Consuelo Foundation here in Hawaii sent us down there with a team from University of Hawaii. Dr. Ben-Iran was in charge of the group. And they sent us down there and we were on a 19-day trip. And on the 17th day, I was so proud the Manila newspaper came out with three-inch headlines. And it says, Memorandum of Understanding between the military, the department of education, social, education and agriculture. Five departments wrote a memorandum of understanding and they funded over 5,000 schools in the Philippines to embrace the steam program. So they wrote a simple rule that anywhere in the law that it said STEMS, S-T-E-M, it would now read with an A in it. Now we did that in 17 days in the Philippines, changed the national policy and they embraced it, okay? We brought it back to Hawaii. You know, welcome back to your hometown, right? Here it took us two years to get the A in. And the A has double meaning here in Hawaii. It's agriculture and arts. And that's because so many of our high schools were doing the STEM program, but that dropped out the music, the band, all the arts classes, theater, all of that fell by the wayside, okay? Which is kind of odd because you go through four years of high school, then you go to college. And what's the first thing you do the first two years in college? Liberal arts, okay? And all the humanities and that. So here we are graduating high school students without the humanities, without the art. So when we partnered up with the school teachers, we did a similar law here in Hawaii. Wherever the law system, now it reads STEAM. And it's a double A, but that looks kind of corny to have a double A. So the A means what it means to in the context, okay? But it really brought back educationally wise, all over the world, they're trying to do a cross-training. So let's say if Natalie was a biology teacher and I was a math teacher, they're telling us we need to find a project to work on together. And it turned out aquaponics is the darling of the educational world. I mean, yeah, you're growing some food, yeah, you're growing some fish, but it's all the engineering that goes into it, the math, how many fish can you put and how many gallons of water, what is the rate of oxygenation, all the percentages, the ratios. So all of a sudden you have the math, the biology, the chemistry people, even the economics people coming up because if you do an aquaponics or aquaculture, the purpose is to feed yourself and or be a business. And that brings in the math big time. And the best was safe for last class. What's that? Our logo here, you see it's blue, aquaponics, where you have the plants growing, aquaponics. Now this was done at the Toloi Foundation. Yeah, Father Rocky's place for his compound called Toloi Foundation. A little eighth grade student, a street kid, an orphan kid, okay. Living at the orphanage, he painted that image 14 feet long on a wall. And we went there and we took a picture of it and we came home, we wrote them and we're helping to fund that young man's education for us through high school and that for as a permission that is our company logo. But it's really neat. Half water, half plants, aquaponics. And in eighth grade, and he's doing that already, he's a National Graphic Scientist. And he has it all over the aquaponics. There is not a place that you walk around where you don't see these beautiful pictures all over his aquaponics. Because an acre of concrete tanks and runways and concrete fish tank, he has painted everything. And when I left after my first trip when I went back, I was really surprised there was one tank that was four feet wide and three feet high and about 50 feet long. And I left two pipes sticking out about two inches long. And I came back and I walk around the corner and I look over and I see this thing and he has painted a diver's face holding a binoculars with the hands on it and it's three-dimensional. And I just couldn't focus on it for a few minutes. That was really cool. But he did a lot of that kind of work. So we really enjoy it. And that Toloi Foundation went from 240 living students now that they're doing that. Four acres of aquaponics in there and they're fish-raising. They're now up to 860 kids living in residence. And each child from kindergarten all the way through high school. In fact, they have a two-year vocational college on the campus. One hour a day on the farm. For that, they get three meals a day and they learn something. Really interesting is any of the students, anybody, any of the nuns on the place everybody can tell you how aquaponics works. They take it seriously there. So anyway, look up that for the Hawaii Summit coming up here in November 16th. I think you'll really enjoy it. And then we'll have workshops here in Kona at the University of Nations. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for this. Think Tech Hawaii, and we really appreciate you watching.