Sweet Water

Love this place!

Sweet Water Organics is a really neat, local, aquaponic (and other) growing operation. My family has taken the tour twice and learned some pretty neat stuff about relevant systems, composting, and bees. Staff is extremely friendly and excited about sharing knowledge of local food endeavor with visitors.
Facility is moderately climate controlled– bring warm clothes for a winter tour.
Great place, would stop again!
I’m hoping for nothing but success for the expanding business and associated non-​profit.

Aside from not quite understanding how to get in the building (a sign on the door would help a lot!), this was probably my favorite thing in our long-​weekend in milwaukee.
The concept here is incredible: to turn abandoned industrial space into useful urban gardening space. They grow fish and greens together in a beautiful symbiotic relationship that provides fertilizer for greens and a cleaning system for fish-​water, they use space that was previously kind of a blight on a post-​industrial city, and they do amazing work educating people on food, agriculture, organics, and ecosystems. I can’t believe there’s not more of this going on, because it’s so cool. Pretty much the minute I left I was calling my aunt to tell her about it, because one of the things they mentioned was how school classrooms always have fish tanks (which my aunt’s classroom has) and they could grow lettuce on top and teach kids about all kinds of amazing things in the process! neat.
They’re also growing organic tomatoes and peppers outside, and getting ready to expand the aquaponic production outside as well. And then there’s the bee keeping. And the compost operation. And the great non-​profit work. And the cool little gift shop.
Seriously, this tour (wednesdays and fridays at 6pm) was the highlight of my weekend. I learned stuff, saw amazing work going on, met some cool people, and spent an hour soaking up the vibes of people doing good in the world. Thanks.

There’s a great team at Sweet Water Organics and they are doing good – promoting sustainable agriculture, revitalizing an industrial Milwaukee neighborhood, and garnering great interest from local, restaurants, and businesses.
Check out M magazine’s article on SWO in this month’s (december 2010) issue.