Building Our Human Skills
What do you think of the value of meditation or daydreaming? I teach it as a fundamental aspect of the human lived experience. I make space for it, and I empower the kids who come to my camps to engage in it.
Carbon BioMass on an Urban Farm
Carbon is a valuable resource on this planet. It can be as minuscule as smoke and soot or as massive as a tree. Mezzacello Urban Farm is sustainable in it’s philosophy, mission, and action. This is a blog post about how much carbon biomass on a farm there really is.
When Mezzacello Makes It Work
Mezzacello Urban Farm is a love letter to sustainability. The summer camps are not a SEPARATE aspect of the ecologies and systems of Mezzacello’s sustainability. They are an integral piece to the life, functionality, and innovation of the urban farm.
Why Sustainability Is So Important Here
This is our house. She is 158 years old and still strong as ever - even after being abandoned for 11 years in the 70s and 80s. She needs a lot of care and comes from a time before convenience. That is why sustainability is so important here. This house was literally a sustainable farmhouse.
Project Sustainability Energy and Ecology (SEE)
The 2025 Summer Camp Season was tied to two main initiatives. The first was officially launching the MenTern program at Mezzacello Urban Farm. The second was Project SEE which manifested as STEM Farming camps focused on sustainability, energy, and ecology.
A Decade of Sustainability
It's been 10 years since we burned down the old overgrown lots to the south of the 1868 house. Back in 2015 we had no idea that Mezzacello would become a state-of-the-art urban farm, research center, summer camp, and energy production hub that it has evolved into. Here is a brief timeline of our history and innovations.
Sustainable Urban Farm Map
This is a presentation I created for the COSI Farm Days Presentation. Each of the 10 ecologies of Mezzacello Urban Farm are outlined here. Each of the ecologies are divided acrosss 7 themes: The built infrastructure, the geosphere and pedosphere, the energy systems, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere, and global impacts.
Three Books: One New Vision of Learning
After a very intense summer camp at Mezzacello Urban Farm around sustainably using wind energy I had a powerful dream. This dream revolved around three books: "Alice's Adventures in wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl, and "A Wrinkle In Time" by Madeline L'Engle. The dream was a response to a conversation I had with the kids about their favorite books and why.
From Waste To Taste
This is a blog p[ost about how we create animal feed at Mezzacello Urban Farm from slightly dehydrated edible weeds and assorted corn, hay, seeds, wheat germ, oils, and molasses. When all of this blended it is mixed with 1/3 it’s mass of water. This is then blended together into a paste, The paste is then extruded, left to dry and voila! Feed!
Black Soldier Flies Production Capstone
Today at Mezzacello, I am joined by a high school intern named Ismail. Ismail is interested in finding a solution to curb hunger and provide nutrients to the needy people in developing nations. This is the perfect opportunity for me to work with a keen young mind and an international pioneer in Kenya!
The Foodist: Mezzacello Sausage and CheeseTortellini Soup
On cold windy winter nights we love to experiment with old standards in new ways. Rick merged the sausage balls from his version of wedding soup with a version of cheese tortellini soup. What’s more is that this recipe is comprised of 70% leftover veggies from other meals and sealed vegetables harvested last summer. Leftovers after this go to the rabbits.
The Foodist: Sustainable Spare Fruits and Veggies Smoothy
This is a secondary recipe from Rick’s Sausage and Cheese Tortellini Soup. The beauty of this is that it uses just five ingredients, a strainer, a blender, some epsom salt, drywall dust, and niacin tablets and Voila! Freeze the leftover ground tailings mix in the salt, gypsum, and niacin and freeze them into cubes. Then you have rabbit treats for the Rabbits. ZERO Waste and a very healthy drink.
The Sustainability Tax
Sustainability is not cheap or easy. It requires innovation, commitment, passion and sacrifice. That last one is what I call the Sustainability Tax. We paid it and are willing to teach or consult.
Mezzacello Sustainable Infrastructure Models
This is Mezzacello Urban Farm’s love letter to sustainability. This map is blank because we build our infrastructure atop these ecologies. In this blog we will be looking at the ecologies and advanced systems that all blend together to make Mezzacello Urban Farm systemically and ecologically sustainable.
Metro J-Term 2025
This is a collection of the Metro J-Term Blogposts Mezzacello Urban Farm collected in January 2025.
Language and the Power of Reframing
This lesson started out as a lesson in learning how to look at data and systems from new perspectives and turned into a mad lib of data synthesis. This was actually a great deal of fun and it is a new tool I will be using with students. The game is called “Coin Purse” for maximum absurdity and permission to be creative with language and the power of reframing.
Sustainability In Nature
In this class we gave each DNA strand (table) a beneficial mutation that would benefit the entire species (class). But one table’s mutation was bad for the other. The challenge was to optimize and use reason and democracy to decide what represented optimal sustainability in nature.
Recycle, Reuse, Reduce In Action
We worked today on a design challenge to encourage kids working with animals to be more aware of the necessity for hand washing, cleaning gloves, and being aware of potential pathogen vectors. Eight teams worked over four periods to design a solution that would help us all be better prepared and protected as we continue to explore sustainability and livestock. See what happened when kids put Recycle, Reuse, Reduce in Action.
The Rules For Engagement
This is a hybrid blogpost and slide entry for my proposed roundtable on my “Sustainability in Nature” class at Metro Schools this January. I have nine days to teach about sustainability, science, technology, engineering, math, farming, economics, discipline, and computer science. No big deal! This is the Rules for Engagement.
Did Dinosaurs Crow?
Today I brought in my rooster from Mezzacello Urban Farm as part of my sustainability in nature class at Metro Schools this week. To say they were mesmerized is an understatement. The look on their faces when that rooster crowed inside its cage - out of sight - was priceless. The kids had so many good questions and created some GREAT ideas for inventions that will make rooster-saurus safer!