TeamCassell

May 4th Weekend: Camping in Algonquin Park

teamcassellAdmin — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:40:04 +0000

Well it was Evelyn’s first time camping this weekend in a tent and and first time in a canoe. It was a pretty sweet weekend. More to come later. Right now all you get is some awesome photos

Leaving Facebook

Phil — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:21:19 +0000

Well I have decided that it is time to leave Facebook and focus more on the website. The Cassell family has so many upcoming adventures that we want to share it all in one place and Facebook just doesn’t cut it any more. I will be setting up a separate Facebook account that will be used only to get information for upcoming events. Stay tuned for more

Busy Times

Phil — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:10:50 +0000

It has been so busy that I havent had time to update the site. I will be however going through photos and remember the events to update. There have been lots of awesome photos with Evelyn and of course our aquaponics is growing like a a monster. Stay tuned for more soon!!

Feb 28th, 2012 Site Upgrade

Phil — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:38:40 +0000

We have launched our new site. We are going through all the past blogs and postings to get them all sorted out. Most of the older blogs dont have the galleries etc; gradually they will be added.

The focus is the new posting and new additions.

More to come!!

Peace
Phil

Getting the plants started

Phil — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:37:53 +0000

Getting the plants started was the easy part; we went to our local hydroponic store (Green Kingdom) and got the plant trays and other supplies for the hydroponic vegetable project, but I will save those details for when that project is up and running We also took off to Home Depot to get seeds and another plant tray that had a heating pad and we picked up another oil heater for the vegetable grow room aka basement bathroom lol.

Supplies:

Florescent Lights (4 Deluxe daylight – 6500kw) plus 2 ballasts
Plastic Shelve
Oil Heater (Room temp was about 20c/69f
Timer (for lights :: simulate the day night cycle)
Seeds (Lettuce, Peppers and Tomatoes)
Water
Love and Tenderness

Aquaponics?

Phil — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:45:57 +0000

What is Aquaponics?

Aquaculture is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a re-circulating system and is the method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system.

What has Team Cassell been doing?

We have always been living as green and organic as we can or as I should say as much as we want to. One aspect of our lives that is important is organic/healthy food. We are not vegetarian, however our meat is grown within 50kms of where we live. When the summer time rolls around and towards the fall we get stocked up on vegetables from the farmers market; even though it supports the local market it does take a hit in the pocket book.

We decided to take on a small aquaponic project to grow some vegetables and hopefully will be able to grow all year around. Below are the materials that I used to set up our system and some pics

Materials:

20 Gallon Fish Tank
Plant Tray
Fluval 405 External Canister Filter
Container to hold tray (I built a cedar box)
waterproof caulking
Clay Pellets
Fish
Gravel
Fancy Decorations
Grow light (if not in a sunny or semi sunny area) I used Daylight (6500kw) florescent lighting
Shelf brackets

More directions to come. For now enjoy the photos

Window Farming

Phil — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:14:14 +0000

So we gave decided to take on the adventure of window farming. If you are wondering what that is; well you can read below and the details are there. We have been researching ways to have fresh vegetables all year around and our first experiment will be window farming. Within the next month once or so a new batch of seeds will have grown enough that we will be setting up up our window farm.

We made ourselves a little grow room to get the seeds going and once they are ready to be transplanted, we will get the windowfarm going. We used the plants that we had just grown for our aquaponic setup.

What Is A Windowfarm?

A Windowfarm is a vertical, hydroponic growing system that allows for year-round growing in almost any window. It lets plants use natural window light, the climate control of your living space, and organic “liquid soil.”

In the hydroponic system, nutrient-spiked water is pumped up from a reservoir at the base of the system and trickles down from bottle to bottle, bathing the roots along the way. Water and nutrients that are not absorbed collect in the reservoir and will be pumped through again at the next interval.

Camping in Algonquin Park

Phil — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:35:26 +0000

We took Evelyn on her first “winter camping” trip Jan 23 and 24th, 2012. It really wasnt winter camping per say cause we were sleeping in a yurt, but nonetheless it was pretty awesome. We had booked this yurt bout 5 months ago and we were really excited about going. The unfornate part was that it was raining all of monday and the tuesday it was a blizzard. All of which we werent able to get little Evelyn out hiking cause of the weather. She had turned 5 months on the sunday, and well…. it was pretty awesome to take my 5 month old daughter to Algonquin Park in the middle of January.

Snowshoeing with Evelyn

Phil — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:46:24 +0000

A couple of weekends ago we all went to Otter lake to snowshoe. The temperature and conditions were perfect to bring Evelyn along. She was all wide eyed for most of the walk and then eventually drifted off to sleep.

Christmas with little Evelyn

Phil — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:48:59 +0000

It was an absolute blast at christmas time with Evelyn. Although she was unaware of the concept, the buzz and excitement was enough to keep her amused. My brother was visiting with his little boy Jasper and my parents were really excited cause both their boys and and grandchildren were all under the same roof.