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.
Introducing Project INCA
This winter 2025 I am making plans for an ambitious remodel of the potager, pond, and water and carbon sequestration systems. I call this plan Project INCA (Innovating Nutrient Capture and Adaptation) Here are the basics.
October 2025 GIFT Presentation
Welcome to Mezzacello Urban Farm. This is a presentation to the Global innovation Field Trip 24-hour STEM presentation event. In this presentation I am explaining the portable solar powered mobile tractor designed and built by 2025 Summer Camp Kids. In addition, this presentation highlights the other innovations put in place - by kids - to truly make this concept sustainable.
Language and STEM
This is a guest camp blog from one of my kids at Ecology Connections summer camp. When I run summer programming on my applied STEM Urban Farm, I really encourage kids to hand-write scripts for filming their presentation of learning videos. It’s a real challenge for most kids — they don’t write by hand often - but it is a real issue for kids with Dyslexia. Rather than excuse them, I repurpose this opportunity to encourage them to problem-solve, build confidence, and practice new skills. This is how I tie language to STEM.
BioChar and the Art of the Slow Burn
How summer camp kids were making biochar. Biochar is biotic matter that is burnt and kept a low oxygen environment. This is a guest camp blog written by team Frog who made biochar for garden beds
Mezzacello Project Fire Soap
A guest camp blog post by two middle school campers at Mezzacello charged with converting waste weeds and wood into ash to mix with glycerine and lye to make soap.
Fishacello Artificial Wetland
This is a guest camp blog from the underwater science team at Mezzacello Urban farm. Theo and Maxwell are the MenTerns in Charge of this experiment. Today we created a platform for the Fishacello Artificial Wetland.
Fishacello and Life Below Water
This is a guest camp blog from the BioMech (AKA Giggle Kingdom) team at Mezzacello Urban farm. Theo and Maxwell are the MenTerns in Charge of this creative writing experiment. How an urban farmer accidentally used an atom collider to turn his rabbits into fish at Fishacello.
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.
Entanglement, Information, Uncertainty, and Poker
This is a guest camp blog from my MenTern Grady at Mezzacello Urban farm. Grady was in Charge of this creative way of teaching quantum entanglement and uncertainty to camp kids using a modified poker game. It was a lot of fun and a surprising way to model superposition for kids to understand.
Introducing Mentors + Interns (MenTerns) Programming
This year in 2025 we will be evolving our intern project to the next level. 2023 and 2024 interns will be returning to Mezzacello Urban Farm to help teach and manage camps. This year, the seasoned kids will also be serving as mentors to newer interns and to the camp kids. So in honor of thois deeper level of engagement, we created the mentor/intern hybrid portmanteau “Menterns”. So this is a blog post Introducing Mentors + Interns = “MenTerns” Programming.
What Confidence Looks and Feels Like
A quick blogpost about a moment in time in my 2024 BioEngineering Camp. Four interns - students trained to teach STEM subjects to other kids - but also learning new ideas from other interns.
Introducing Camp Stories at Mezzacello
The beginning of a series of blog posts about my summer camp experiences here at Mezzacello Urban Farm. These happen all the time, but I rarely share them. I think I should start!
Portable Energy Generation systems (PEGs)
An emerging aspect of our mission to Grow, Maintain, Sustain, and Explain is improved portable units to teach our Applied STEM systems in more locations. PEGs is the latest offering. Portable Energy Generation systems.