At the heart of Gunni Gal’s operations is an aquaponics greenhouse. “The greenhouse itself is a piece of equipment,” said Van Zandt. “It is not just a facility. It is absolutely integral to being able to grow year-round.”[/caption]
Alex Van Zandt’s dream to bring aquaponic farming to the valley has become a reality. Aquaponics is a farming technology that uses fish waste to grow beneficial bacteria and plants.
Customers at Van Zandt’s start-up, Gunni Gal, now include Mario’s Pizza and Pasta, The Dive, Camp Gunnison and her neighborhood community-supported agriculture (CSA). Tuesdays and most Fridays, Van Zandt delivers to Gunnison Vitamin and Health Food Store and Organic Wilder’s Market. The Gunni Gal product — for now, mostly leafy greens — sells out fast, however.
“The product typically sells out in 24 hours,” Van Zandt said. “I would really like to broaden my CSA customers. It’s free delivery for people in my neighborhood, but I would like to branch out and extend that to other parts of Gunnison and maybe even CB South.”
The vision started seven years ago in Austin, Texas over a cookout by fire with her husband, Jeffrey Van Zandt, and Fred Ramirez, one of their best friends.
“Freddie used to come over, and we would do these massive fire cook-outs,” she said. “We would cook with fire, and then we would spend hours dissecting Van Halen songs and all things the history of rock ’n’ roll.” It was during one of these evenings of fire, drink and music that Ramirez, who is in the restaurant business, told the Van Zandts about visiting an aquaponics farm.
“And he (Ramirez) was blown away by the quality of the produce available,” Van Zandt said. “And the scale — the sheer ability to produce that much in a small space. And then the idea of the regenerative piece, the sustainable piece. It just blew him away.”
The Van Zandts started researching, and a dream took shape: to move from Austin to Gunnison and start an aquaponics operation of their own. After four years of searching for the right property, they finally found it. On July 1 of 2020, Jeffrey Van Zandt drove to Gunnison for the first stage of their move.
Two days later, he died in a car accident on Ohio Pass. Alex Van Zandt, grief-stricken, did not give up on their dream.
“It is impossible for me to convey in one conversation with you what my life has been like since July 4, 2020,” Van Zandt wrote. “But please know that I would not be where I am at this moment without the love and support of family and friends, an authentic appreciation for the briefness and gift that is a life, and a dogged persistence to make stuff happen.”
In addition to running Gunni Gal, Van Zandt works full-time as an adjunct lecturer for the education department at Western Colorado University.
Why aquaponics?
It is easy to confuse aquaponics with hydroponics, but they’re not the same, Van Zandt said, particularly when it comes to water usage. Hydroponics generates waste water, or water that has been treated with additives that are potentially toxic to the ecosystem.
“The only water that I lose in my system is through transpiration through plant leaves and evaporation,” Van Zandt said. After the initial fill, her greenhouse takes, on average, 2,182 gallons a month. According to the U.S. Geographical Survey, a family of four uses, on average, anywhere from 2,400 to 3,000 gallons a month. In this way, aquaponics addresses the critical need for water, a finite resource.
Aquaponics also addresses the need to make the most of the finite resource of space. At the heart of Gunni Gal operations is a passive solar greenhouse that operates year-round, maximizing its land footprint. In contrast, sustainable soil farmers rely on crop rotation to replenish the soil with nutrients. These farmers cannot optimize their soil for 100% growth.
In addition, aquaponics is a recirculating system. It is not completely closed — as aquaponics farmers need to feed their fish — but it’s close. A pictograph on the Gunni Gal website neatly illustrates a cycle where fish eat and produce waste, which is consumed by beneficial bacteria, triggering a nitrification process that generates nutrient-rich water, which then becomes a natural fertilizer for the water —for the fish.
More fundamentally, what aquaponics offers the valley is agricultural diversification: another approach to sustainable farming.
“What I am proposing is that there are opportunities to diversify our agricultural practices in Gunnison,” Van Zandt said.
Alex Van Zandt can be reached at gunnigal.com.
(Mara Taylor-Heine can be contacted at mara@gunnisontimes.com.)
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