SNOWDEN, Wash. — You'll find Jeff Raymond and his ambitious experiment off the grid and beyond the end of the road, deep in rural south-central Washington.
"We have lots of lettuce," Raymond said, as he points out the crops growing inside his space-age greenhouse. "Carrots, green beans. This is an apple tree."
But unlike lonely Matt Damon, who played a Mars-stranded astronaut in the film, The Martian, the man they call The Real Martian has some company, his wife Alicia.
"Mrs. Martian," she said with a laugh.
The Raymonds hope to prove that environmentally friendly farming can happen anywhere on earth, and beyond.
"I 100-percent believe that this is something that can go to space," said Jeff Raymond.
They've built the Hab One greenhouse using many of the skills Raymond has learned as an aerospace engineer, his day job.
"Our goal this year is you walk in, it looks like the Garden of Eden," Raymond said.
Here, plants sprout from beds of lava rock instead of soil.
Raymond said, "All the systems that you have in here are all self-contained systems. We're missing oxygen generation, but if you get enough plants in here you could actually generate enough oxygen."
Live fish provide fertilizer. Water is recycled. Solar panels supply much of the power. And tanks called digesters will soon use plant waste to provide gas for heating.
"You've got to figure out your way to keep all your energy costs as low as possible," Raymond said.
The would-be astronaut is even growing Martian-style potatoes.
"We don't use our own poop to grow them," he was quick to add.
It took more than five years to design and build this space-age habitat. Sharing the journey on YouTube was a neighbor's idea.
Raymond said, "He came in and looked at everything and was like, 'This is really cool. Know what? You're like the real Martian.' And it stuck."
Now thousands of subscribers help troubleshoot.
"I have a lot of different people with a lot of different experiences, and they're actually helping us design and work through some of the problems that we have," Raymond said. "That part's been really cool."
What they learn here could help feed the world's population, expected to reach 10 billion around the year 2050.
"Scientists are telling us that in order to feed all those people we need to increase our agricultural output by 75 percent," Raymond said.
Maybe someday The Real Martian will get to take this farm show to the real Mars, with Mrs. Martian by his side.
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