Three shallow growing beds along a deck railing, one mounded over with kale, lava rock visible in the trays.

2011 to 2013, before the acre

It started with a fish tank under the stairs.

Nothing here was a farm. It was a storage room, then a deck. But every idea that went into the acre in Fallbrook was tried at this scale first, cheaply, where a failure cost a weekend instead of a season.

Where this stands

Concept stage, reviving in 2026. Not licensed, no finished batch, nothing for sale. This site is a record of what we have built and what we are planning.

The first experiment, 2011

Barley grass over goldfish, in a storage room under the stairs.

A glass tank, some goldfish, and a tray of barley grass on a frame built out of scrap timber above them. The fish fed the grass, the grass cleaned the water, and the whole thing ran under a shop light in a room with no daylight in it at all.

It is a small thing to look at. It is also the whole idea the Fallbrook build ran on, tested for the price of an aquarium: the water carries the food, the plants sit above it, and nothing gets thrown away.

A tray of barley grass on a timber frame directly above a glass tank of goldfish, lit by a shop light. — Sep 2011The grass tray sits directly over the tank. Fish below, roots above.

The same rig seen from the doorway, the light above it throwing color onto the wall of the storage room. — Sep 2011The whole thing, in a doorway two people could not get past each other in.

The storage room under the stairs with the growing rig at the far end and shelving along the wall. — Oct 2011The room it lived in: under the stairs, no window.

A tray of seedlings started in lava rock under two clamp lamps on a timber stand. — Oct 2011Seedlings started in lava rock under clamp lamps, the medium we kept.

The deck, summer 2012

Then it moved outside, onto a deck, and started producing.

Two shallow tubs, plumbed with white PVC and a small pump, set on a deck that had been holding nothing but a folding chair. Built in a week. Planted the same month.

An empty deck with mesh railing panels and dappled shade, before anything was built on it. — May 2012The deck before: a railing, some shade, and nothing else.

A shallow growing tub with a white PVC manifold and a black standpipe fitted, empty and dry. — Jul 2012Plumbed and tested dry before a seed went anywhere near it.

The same tub filled with medium and planted out with small seedlings in rows. — Jul 2012Planted out. Small, and evenly spaced on purpose.

The bed a week later with the greens grown together into a continuous canopy. — Jul 2012A week on, closing into a canopy.

Two beds on a timber rack packed edge to edge with pale green leaves under a strip light. — Jul 2012Full, on a rack, with light added to stretch the day.

Season extension, winter 2012

A cold frame over the top, and the deck kept going through winter.

Polycarbonate panels on a black timber frame, hinged so the whole lid props open on a warm afternoon. It is the same argument as the hoop house at Fallbrook, at one hundredth the size: hold the heat, extend the season, harvest in months when nobody else is.

A polycarbonate cold frame on the deck with its lid propped open, greens growing inside. — Nov 2012The lid props open. That is the entire climate control.

A bed packed edge to edge with mixed young greens, water beaded on the leaves. — Nov 2012Inside it, in November, cut and coming again.

Two gravel-filled beds inside the cold frame with white PVC feed pipes running along them. — Dec 2012Gravel beds and the feed line, under glass.

The year of the acre, 2013

Three little beds, and more food than three little beds should make.

By the time the acre in Fallbrook was going up, the deck was running three beds of lava rock along the railing and turning out food steadily. That is the number worth holding on to: three beds, a few square feet, and a real amount of food coming off them.

This is why the Fallbrook build did not start from a blank page, and why the pickles do not need much ground either. The method was already working at the smallest scale we could try it at.

Three shallow beds along the deck railing, the near one mounded over with kale, rooftops beyond. — Aug 2013Three beds on the rail, the near one buried under its own crop.

Looking along the run of deck beds, greens spread across red lava rock with the white feed pipe running between them. — Sep 2013Down the run: lava rock, a feed line, and no soil anywhere in it.

What came off it

It all ended up on the kitchen counter, and there was more of it than you would think.

This is the part that settles the argument. Not the build, not the plumbing: the amount of food that came out of a few square feet of deck and went into bags on a countertop, week after week.

A steel colander heaped with freshly cut frilly greens on a dark granite kitchen counter. — Nov 2012One cut, straight off the deck and into the colander.

Two large zip bags packed full of washed salad greens lying on the kitchen counter. — Mar 2013Washed and bagged. Two bags from one morning.

Four bulging zip bags of salad greens lined up along the kitchen counter beside the stove. — Dec 2013A row of them. This is what a small growing space actually produces.

What this has to do with pickles

Making pickles is not the same job as farming, but it goes wrong in the same place: whether the ingredient turns up, on time, at a price you knew in advance, in the condition you expected. Everything on this page is a cheap answer to that question, worked out years before there was anything to sell.

The scale went up after this, to an acre. The habit did not change.