Gro-op

Due to loosing power for 3 days, all 400 of our adult tilapia have died in the Blizzard of 22’. We made a fierce effort to drive in the blizzard on Friday to acquire a gas generator and got it setup to keep their air pumps running. Unfortunately, the gas tank only runs for 5-6 hours and then needs to be refilled. By that point at 10 pm on Friday the roads were impassable with abandoned vehicles everywhere, gigantic snowdrifts, and 80 mile an hour gusts leaving zero visibility. One of our Worker Owners tried going back only to get stuck multiple times and get hit by a plow, luckily they barely made it back home.

While this is horrible news we were elated to find that our plants survived and our baby fingerling tilapia are alive as well. We have a lot of cleaning to do and we need to figure out how to keep the system going with out any fish, but we are all safe. This will be a challenging time going forward as we don’t have livestock insurance and it will take months to grow new fish for the system.

Although this is tough, there are many people who lost their lives this past weekend, so we give our condolences to those families that lost their loved ones.

Many people and businesses are going through hardships now and hopefully we as a community in Buffalo can pull together and find a way forward. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Kwanzaa too all.