LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Providing local food to the community. That's the goal of the Faul Family Riverside Farm in Sulphur, Kentucky.
The farm has the type of land that you normally associate with the beauty of Kentucky, but there's no large body of water, certainly no ocean. That's not stopping this family from raising something that's normally found in saltwater.
"The is one of our tanks, this holds about 4 thousand gallons," Andre Faul said.
One tank holds 5,000 shrimp, which comes out to 200 pounds, right now they have two tanks. This is no new venture, Faul has a background raising saltwater fish in Florida.
"I got in touch with Kentucky State, went for a tour of their facility and they showed me the research they're doing on saltwater shrimp and it really sparked my business. I wanted to do something like this on my farm," Faul said.
The farm, which was bought at the end of 2015 received a grant from the University and had a trial run last year. The ended up producing 400 pounds of shrimp Faul said, "It went great, the restaurants loved, people loved it, they'd come out here to get some shrimp, I took them to the
Restaurants like Harvest Restaurant are their repeat customers. Now, they're looking to expand to have seven tanks. The farm also have chicken, cows and pigs.
To the Faul's, transparency is their priority, "They appreciate that they can come back here and see the shrimp still alive and how I'm raising it and they can purchase it directly from me. Especially like shrimp where their freshness drops after a couple days."
He says farmed fish often get a bad rap because of the lack in transparency. You don't know exactly where they came from, what they ate or how they were treated. At their farm, they can show you, "All it is in our tanks is water, salt, shrimp and then shrimp feed and that's it."
Providing you the option to be conscious of what you're putting into your body by going straight to the source.
The shrimp will be ready in mid-August where you can actually come and pick it up, they also do educational farm tours.
Here's a link to their website.
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