By harvesting at dawn and delivering before noon, we’ll deliver within minutes or hours of harvest—not days or weeks.

We have two sizes and two subscription lengths:

HALF-SIZE ORDERS — One 12” x 15” insulated shopping bag full

Seasonal subscriptions consist of five every-other-week deliveries

$59.85 — $11.97/ea

Annual subscriptions consist of 25 every-other-week deliveries

$299.25 — $11.97/ea

FULL-SIZE ORDERS — One 20”x 20” insulated shopping bag full

Seasonal subscriptions consist of five every-other-week deliveries

$99.75 — $19.95/ea

Anual subscriptions consist of 25 every-other-week deliveries

$498.75 — $19.95/ea

We will also offer SNAP and other discounts! Please sign up for our newsletter for details!

No, not if you act now. For people who subscribe before we sow our first seeds, our attractive and efficient insulated bag and “forever” ice pack will be yours to keep. Anyone not already signed up or on our waiting list before those first seeds are sown may pay a deposit. Join our waitlist now and save!

Yes! (Is this not America?)

Sign-up for our newsletter, or better yet join our waitlist for info about discounts and FREE gifts.

And don’t forget, we will soon offer double-up bucks for SNAP payments.

When you subscribe for one of our 10-week seasons, we intend to deliver to your neighborhood every 14 days—before noon. We hope that our first deliveries occur this summer.

We deliver every other week, so please expect five deliveries during a 10-week season.

We strongly believe in every-other-week deliveries because

• Our dawn-harvested aquaponics produce lasts for a long time in the fridge, so there is no reason to deliver too often.

• Sometimes people travel, go out to eat, or plan meals that do not include lettuce (can you believe it?).

• We want you to eat at your leisure and not feel the pressure that a weekly delivery might instill.

• If we deliver every other week, we have more customers, so we get to spread our local, tasty, healthy, fresh, highly ecological, and conveniently delivered food to more people.

In the future, we may move to an optional weekly delivery, but for now, 14 days (+/-) is the plan.

Our every-other-week delivery plan does not work for seasons with an odd number of weeks (like the 13 weeks in winter, spring, summer, and fall). If we used 12-week seasons, we would have to have big gaps in between seasons or one four-week season each year. These options would have only created additional confusion.

Our five 10-week seasons (which are actually 10.4 weeks long) allow for a few days at the end of each season to fulfill any orders that tripped us up over the course of the season, to deliver extra produce to people in need, and to make sure we’re all set for another great season.

The names of our five 10-week seasons (10.4 week to be exact) are:

BBQ (Jun-Jul-Aug)

Fiestas (Aug-Sep-Oct)

Holiday (Nov-Dec-Jan)

Cool (Jan-Feb-Mar)

Windy (Mar-Apr-May)

The names do a couple of things. They help subscribers and farmers consider the impact of seasonal weather on our deliveries. They also remind us of the excitement and the responsibilities we may have when it comes to each season.

Aquaponics is the combination of hydroponics—“growing plants in water”—and aquaculture—“growing fish.” In aquaponics, we feed fish and convert their wastes into a nutrient-rich water that we use to fertilize our plants. Our plants clean the water, which is returned to the fish.

Aquaponics saves water, conserves land, improves local food security, eliminates downstream pollution from farm runoff, radically decreases food miles traveled, increases freshness and the food’s nutrient content, and more!

A great free resource about aquaponics was written by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2016. It states that aquaponics uses 10% of the water that soil-based agriculture consumes. This kind of water savings is a complete game-changer for our species. If you live in New Mexico, it probably gives you goosebumps just thinking about it.

Aquaponics often gets confused with hydroponics, but the difference is clear as water: Hydroponics has no fish, and bacteria are often prevented from growing. You have to add many chemicals to hydroponics systems. Occasionally, aquaponics systems will need to buffer their pH with small amounts of calcium or potassium, and other nutrients are sometimes added, but about 17 or 18 “salts” or fertilizers (aka essential nutrients) are added on a regular basis to hydroponic systems. In contrast, in aquaponics we typically add fish food and a small bit of iron in order to create a living ecosystem filled with plants, fish, bacteria, and more.

No. Modern commercial aquaponics stems from ancient practices that date back centuries. It’s easy to imagine agriculture and aquaculture having a scrambled relationship—similar to that of the proverbial chicken and egg. Which came first? Who knows? Maybe both were tried at the same time in the form of aquaponics.

If the first farmers directed water from streams into flood plains to water their crops, as the water soaked into their soils what would happen to the fish, roe, and waste excretions that were there inadvertently?

We’ll never know, but we do know that the first detailed written records about the aquaculture process come from China in 472 BCE, while extant records regarding agriculture are much older.

In addition to aquaponics being practiced across southeast Asia before the common era, the ancient Romans and Aztecs built large aquaponic systems that fed many people. Now, thanks to improvements in controlled-environment-agriculture technology, aquaponics has entered the modern era of farming leading the way toward the kind of regenerative agriculture that could make a real difference for our species.

Aquaponics has only recently joined the modern field of “commercial agriculture.” Pumps, fish tanks, biofilters, aerators, and raised beds full of plants and water require thoughtful design and money—especially since it’s also necessary to have complete control of the environment surrounding any aquaponic farm. We believe that this highly ecological farming method has not taken off commercially yet for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones is that aquaponics has been trying to compete against conventional agribusiness in supermarkets instead of delivering to their neighbors’ doors.

Aquaponics is one of the most ecological forms of agriculture available in the region, if not the world.

Meanwhile, our farm-to-home delivery system only adds to the ecological benefits of our system. Here’s why:

• Uses 90% less water

• Produces minimal waste

• Preserves wildlands because it’s highly land efficient

• Vastly reduces food miles by the hundreds or thousands

• Uses reusable packaging

• Delivers to people in need

• Encourages neighborliness

• Hires local SFCC graduates for STEM jobs

It’s so yummy, we think, because it’s so fresh. Our produce also avoids the long, convoluted trip from a farm 1,000 miles away to the farm vehicle out in the middle of nowhere, to the truck that goes to the big packing-and-distribution warehouse, to another other truck that drives up to the backside of the supermarket, to the pushcart that gets rolled out to the produce aisle shelf, to the shoppers who pick over it, to your shopping cart, to the line at the cashier, to checkout clerk and bagger, to your car, down the road, up your driveway, and from your driveway to your fridge.

It’s also true that our aquaponic growing method plays an important role in our product’s great flavor, but more scientific research should be done before we make the bold claims that we’d like to make.

No matter the reason, the data is clear. Out of 170 people who responded to the multiple-choice question during our 2020 study, 88% loved the flavor, 12% like it, and no one chose indifference, dislike, or disgust for the flavor of our lettuce.

The people in our SFCC study loved our packaging! It keeps our produce at the right temperature.

It’s light and easy to clean. It also looks great while being simple to fold up and put away.

If you have ever ordered from a food-delivery company, you may have been appalled by the amount of packaging materials that come with it. Ours is just a silver, reusable insulated bag with little handles. We typically toss in a frozen ice pack to maintain a cool temperature inside.

We ask that you leave the bag and ice pack out on your front porch before our next delivery. If you forget, that’s OK, but we will need the packaging back on our next visit to your neighborhood.

Lettuce is a healthy, popular food that is the basis for most salads, the fresh-crunchy-nutritious flavor in most sandwiches, and a great way to enliven a tortilla wrap. To everyone’s benefit, leafy greens and herbs grow really well in aquaponics systems. Still, we hope to expand into strawberries, tomatoes, cukes, peppers, and eggplants, too!

The “Etc” refers to the endless list of items we could offer—not only from our farm but also from local and regional farmers who are looking to get into the home-delivery market. If you’re a farmer who would like to explore a long-term relationship with us, please let us know!

If you subscribe now, you will be able to have a say in what “Etc” products we offer in the future!

10 Emblem Road is located about 550 feet southwest of the Santa Fe Place mall parking-lot. We’re super busy and, as much as we would like to, we can’t entertain everyone’s spontaneous curiosity. We will have public tours occasionally, so please sign up for our newsletter to stay updated. We also intend to share much of what goes on at Lettuce Etc via on our News page, social media, etc.

Except for the fish-meat picture, which was taken by our friend and neighbor, professional photographer Francesca Yorke, the rest of the photos were taken by Nate Downey.

PREORDERS secure a spot on one of our Santa Fe routes. The waitlist makes you wait for this secure position, but gives you a good chance of getting a place at the moment. However, it’s not a waitlist based solely on time spent on it. Proximity to other subscribers will be another factor in determining who gets moved off of the list and into a route (when the time comes this summer to finalize our routes).