The house I am in has a large enclosed courtyard with an amazing fountain in the middle of that courtyard.
It also is home to a rich diversity of birds, bugs, and lizards.
So far I have managed to count at least 7 individual personalities in the resident lizard population.
I have named some of them.
There is "Half-Tail", (obviously he has a shortened tail, no doubt from a narrow escape from some larger predator). There is "Bold Boy", (he literally hangs upside down and stares right in my eyes), and there is "Swifty".
Swifty is the fastest lizard I have ever seen, with an incredibly long tail.
After about three weeks of trying I finally got a picture of him yesterday.
Sometimes I am simply mesmerized by the richness of the activity all of these small but incomparably complex life forms experience every day.
They face daily struggles and travails just as daunting as those I feel I face yet they are irrepressible in their determination to succeed and indeed flourish. And they do it all with a fascinating sense of optimism and dogged persistence.
Their lives may seem little to me but after close observation I suspect their goals and plans are as big and ambitious to them as I feel mine are to me.
Speaking of big plans, we harvested over 1,000 pounds of shrimp yesterday as part of the conclusion of our growth and biological trials.
The system has been performing brilliantly but we still had not seen the overall condition of the shrimp in large scale numbers nor had we faced the final and perhaps most important question, to wit; "how would they taste?"
Ultimately, it is the quality and taste of the product that will make or break any endeavor such as ours.
Our system is a "natural system." In addition to being recirculating, bio-secure, and environmentally friendly our system reduces FCR's and feed costs by creating and managing a nutrient rich bio-floc upon which the shrimp feed.
With outside observers and seafood experts standing by, after close examination the harvested shrimp were pronounced , "beautiful and flawless in external appearance;
and after a simple and quick boil, and cooling on some ice,
the penultimate comment by our resident expert on seafood marketing and quality said, " Not to be over dramatic but these are the best shrimp I have every tasted". Other comments were " they taste sweet, with a flavor profile like a lobster firm and crisp", and my favorite, "think how good these will taste with a little melted butter".
So, the last question has been answered.
Now, we are making adjustments and some improvements to the production greenhouse and we will restock that 1/4 scale facility to full commercial densities in the weeks ahead, but our big plans are now to quickly find the funding to build full size production greenhouses and expand production to significant numbers as soon as possible.
And we will be irrepressible in our determination to succeed and indeed flourish.
And we will follow the example of those "little lives" around me, and do it all with a fascinating sense of optimism and dogged persistence.
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