From the newsroom

I'd never heard of aquaponics before last month. When I first heard the term used to describe a farm that had recently moved to Bellingham, I imagined a kind of underwater garden. Was the farm growing seaweed, perhaps?

As it turns out, Bellingham's FarmWild is growing the kinds of crops you'd recognize on your La Fiamma Pizza order or in your Acme

Farms meal kit box: basil, cilantro, lettuce, tumeric and ginger. It's just that most of those plants grow directly in water, their ghostly pale roots fully exposed when the pallets they rest in are lifted up.

The key to the farm's success: fish. The animals and plants in an aquaponic farm form a symbiotic system. Bacteria convert fish waste pumped through the system into chemicals that are beneficial to plants. After the plants take the water's nutrients, it goes back to the fish.

In late September, I toured owner Brian Rusk's farm and learned what sets this unusual process apart.

Today's news

Employee Reese Muirhead harvests lettuce from the thirds level of planters in September at FarmWild in downtown Bellingham. (Finn Wendt/Cascadia Daily News)

Farming in downtown Bellingham? It's possible, thanks to fish

PeaceHealth expansion continues amid unknown local impact of federal cuts

Lynden passes public safety tax

Bellingham's Ward 4 council race pits organizer against educator

Whatcom County Council District 2 candidates talk housing, voting reform and immigration rights

Gallery: Indigenous Peoples' Day Celebration in Lummi draws hundreds

CDN endorses: Elizabeth Boyle for Whatcom County Council District 2

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What's the Deal With?

Cascadia Daily News Executive Editor Ron Judd was among those featured on the Wheaties box posters at Wild Buffalo. (Isaac Stone Simonelli/Cascadia Daily News)

What's the Deal With: The giant Wheaties box in Wild Buffalo?

Have a suggestion for a "What's the Deal With?" Email us at newstips@cascadiadaily.com.

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