Archive for the ‘News’ Category

New workers in the greehouse

Friday, May 21st, 2010

If you have ever visited us at the market or come out to the farm, you have most likely heard one us say that all our products are pesticide free. It’s true that we use no chemical pesticides; however we do employ some methods of pest control. We use what are known as beneficial insects to keep the pests out of the greenhouse.

These insects work all day and all night to keep the pests from destroying your food. While we may only have a handful of human workers here at RhibaFarms, we have thousands of insect ones. The Praying Mantis is one of our hardest workers in the greenhouse and we recently welcomed in hundreds of new inspect employees.

If you would like to know more about our beneficial insects send us an email or check out http://www.beneficialinsects101.com/

Chickens and eggs

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

In addition to our exciting Aquaponics project, we are diversifying our products in other areas.  These are our new Rhode Island Red chickens.  Excess product has been one of our most important issues at RhibaFarms, these chickens are one of our solutions.  The chickens will be raised on a diet of wheatgrass, micro-greens and double structured water to be supplemented by a traditional natural grain diet when and if needed.  We are planning on bringing a better quality egg to the market, produced by the best fed chickens in the valley.

Our chickens are living out at RhibaFarms south near Florence.  When they get a little bigger they will move into their new chicken tractor and will serve a third purpose of conditioning the soil in the fields at RhibaFarms south.  These 50 chickens are merely chicks now but in about 5 months we will have eggs available.

Rhibafarms Field trip

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Agroecology Instructor Rebekah Doyle Guss brought her plant propagation class from Prescott College down to Chandler to visit us on Friday the 26th of February.  She found us on the wonderful Local Harvest farm directory.  After a personal tour of RhibaFarms, she was convinced to bring her whole class down. This 13 student class is currently conducting their own experiments in micro-green growing as well as experiments with propagation of native plant species. Other projects include the planning of campus gardens and the relocation of a greenhouse on to the campus at Prescott College.

During their time here, they learned about our future aquaponics plans, a bit of RhibaFarms history and general day to day operations from Mark.  Roger, our water expert spoke to them about water, more particularly about how city water can be improved for growing.  He showed them what 500 PPM of total dissolved solids (tap water) looks like after being separated by a water flocculator.  Roger also went over some of the concepts of structured water.  Office and internet operations were briefly discussed by Suzi and Brian.  We took the class outside behind the greenhouse to see our soon to be running aquaponics tanks and to our experimental raised beds that contain peppers and lettuce.  While inside the greenhouse Harold went over our different hydroponics systems and Mark explained some of the basic features of our greenhouse.

We hope the class got some useful information, we know we had a ton of fun.  If you have a class or group that is interested in touring RhibaFarms, let us know at info@rhibafarms.com.  We can do tours for classes from kindergarten through college.

Thanks to Rebekah and her class for coming out.  You can find out more about the many agricultural programs they offer at Prescott College at www.prescott.edu

Localove: the happiest $1 in town

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Another one of the many many great uses for our wheatgrass.

JaimeeRose – Localove: the happiest $1 in town.

We’re on Twitter and Facebook

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Keep up with what is going on at the RhibaFarms greenhouse. Follow us on Twitter and become a fan of RhibaFarms on Facebook. We also give out coupons, announce special events, and talk about eating healthy in general plus we will answer all your questions about wheatgrass and micro-greens!

Follow RhibaFarms on Twitter               Follow RhibaFarms on Facebook

RhibaFarms Interview in the AZ Republic

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Check out this great interview with Mark and Marlo.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/news/articles/2009/10/09/20091009biz-abg-smallbiz1010.html

Kim Brown Supports Rhibafarms

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Kim Brown, a local health food advocate and mother, invited us into her home to introduce her and her friends to our living foods.  It was great to meet so many health conscious folks and to talk about good foods.

  Kim has found a way to revese Type 1 Diabetes in her daughter Kylie.  Quoted from her blog “We have found that grain and dairy eliminated has helped reverse the signs of Type 1 Diabetes in youngest daughter Kylie.  Through testing we found that her body needed those foods eliminated in order to rest her broken pancreas and start a regeneration process.  It took 6 months.  A total shock because we were expecting a lifetime to fight the disease.”  Check out her blog post about RhibaFarms here. Also check out the rest of the blog at http://www.livingwithouttype1.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the write up and keep up the amazing work Kim!

Project Shinae

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

shinae_marketMeet Shinae, she is a big fan of our Broccoli shoots.  Unfortunately, the summer heat has made Broccoli growing very difficult and has been disappointing for Shinae when she comes to visit us on Saturdays at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market.   What we have decided to do for Shinae is grow her Broccoli shoots in our new hydroponics lab.  We will be using the hydroponics lab as our R&D growing area for new or difficult crops.  If you have any suggestions for things we should try growing, send them over to info@rhibafarms.com.   We will keep you updated on Project Shinae here on the blog.

 

hydro_tablehydro_veggies

40 Flats of Wheatgrass grown for Wholefoods

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Today has been an exciting one over here at RhibaFarms. Our first shipment of wheatgrass for Wholefoods was picked up this morning by our good friends at Stern produce. We are getting the greenhouse ready for the high production demands of Wholefoods and we are eager to get growing.

Ready for Wholefoods Off to Wholefoods

 

 

Here you can see one of our RhibaFarms pest control employees inspecting the boxes of wheatgrass.

rhibacom employee

Earth Day tips/links

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

240px-the_earth_seen_from_apollo_17

Today is Earth Day, and we here at RhibaFarms would like to pass on some very helpful links for being environmentally conscious. Of course eating locally grown food has less of a carbon foot print, bypassing the need to have hundreds of trucks, trains and planes delivering food from one end of the planet to the other. Make sure to support your local growers by shopping at Farmer’s Markets when you can.

Below are some links for great Earth Day tips and remember you should follow these tips everyday of the year and not just on Earth Day.

Water conservation
Green Travel Tips
7 ways to a greener computer
What to do this Earth Day
10 Earth Day Tips

and just for fun this from The Onion

Happy Earth Day from RhibaFarms