A System Winds Through It
A map of the integrated ecologies at Mezzacello Urban Farm each color has a different pattern, process, and structure.
This morning I was dreading to go out and check on the 4 week-old chicks as a chick escaped from the secure in the tractor and a very fast (black feathered) into the darkness. I couldn’t see or find it, so it had to fend for itself overnight. It found refuge in the formal garden as a system winds through it.
“,,,over the summer students in summer camps, using IR camera technology, mapped the life living in the allee and determined an average of 18 unique animals — plus one scared chick.”
Pattern, Process, Structure
This is the mantra to a sustainable and systems approach to any ecology. There MUST be more than one path to success for a system to be sustainable. That is why the map above is so important; It shows how each respective North-South axis at Mezzacello adds to the next — starting with beauty and green life and ending with compost and knowledge.
That chick survived the night. It was able to find shelter in the boxwoods and the hornbeams and was waiting at the tractor in the morning. The very geometry of the formal gardens and allee are what saved its little life, I think. So much biomass and structure to hide within. In fact, over the summer students in summer camps, using IR camera technology, mapped the life living in the allee and determined an average of 18 unique animals -- plus one scared chick.
The key has been understanding what role the patterns of the integrated ecologies follow, what natural and man-made processes (emphasis on natural here) are required to obtain the entropic maximum, and what structures will be required to achieve that.
Adaptation and Entropy
This careful planning and building of systems is not some wise strategy applied just in time. It is the result of years of continuous study, experimentation, adaptation, and refinement. All to achieve the lowest amount of effort required to obtain maximum results and energy. This is the adapatation strategy.
This, Mezzacello Urban Farm is a system born of failure, but optimized for success. The success is due to the balance of pattern, process and structure to achieve balance in chaos and change. This is Entropy; the fact that everything evolves towards more chaotic and diverse systems and equilibrium.
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This map tells a story about Mezzacello Urban Farm being a living hybrid machine for life. It starts with building as much natural diversity and ecological and agricultural throughputs as possible. Then it organizes them according to position, access to light, and function. This creates stations and nexus point that allows each component to provide as much to the system and with as little turbulence and effort as possible.
Not Perfect, But Evolving
“... [the pond] has slowly adapted into a benefit, but required an enormous amount of time, effort, and resources to optimize. ”
To be clear, mistakes were made. But the original plan, naive and precious as it was has served us well. It started as a place to grow food and enough infrastructure in place to allow a truck to drive through and deliver products.
That has morphed and evolved over time to the two main east west axis routes to allow for the maximum diverse responses to natural systems to the least amount of required outside resources. (See the amended law of sustainability). The evolution has been guided and refined by experience, failure, and necessity — the keys to all growth in the natural world.
The pond is one consistent point of failure. It has slowly adapted into a benefit, but required an enormous amount of time, effort, and resources to optimize. It’s pattern, process, and structure is wrong for the site. But a 4,000L (1100 Gallon) hole that is 1.8m (6’) x deep, 5m (16’) long, and 2.5m (8’) wide is not something you build twice. So we learned to optimize it’s weaknesses and build on it’s strengths.
This chick! I tagged her, she’s a survivor, but she’s got a rebellious spirit!
Nature is never willing to give up. Nature knows and models for us that diversity is the pattern, adaptation and creative reframing is the process, and overcoming obstacles is the structure that supports the webs of life. That is what I teach here at Mezzacello Urban Farm. That is why that scared little chick survived and it is how all of us will make it as well.
