animal

Not All Calcium is the Same

Today was the first day of spring that I have to do planting maintenance at Mezzacello. One of my primary tasks was making sure both the animal, aquatic, and botanical species that we grow here have appropriate levels of the…

Elements of an Ecosystem

This is the aquatic ecosystem at Mezzacello, also known as the pond. Arrayed around it are all the input and output streams that come from this one ecosystem and will go to other 4 ecosystems at Mezzacello in turn. The…

A photo of the pond with some of the inputs and outputs.

Ducks are Garden Ninjas

I left the gate open from the chicken yard to the potager garden for 10 seconds. I know it was 10 seconds because I was programming an Arduino system for a solar powered water pump. I was programming it for…

Ducks will take any opportunity to get in to the fenced potager garden for the primo bugs.

When An Urban Farm is More Urban

When the line between work and farming becomes most obvious is usually where those two worlds collide, like you see here.

Sometimes the Urban Part is more important than the Farming part.

Preserving Eggs: A Six-Month Update

My mission at Mezzacello is to Grow, Maintain, Sustain, and Explain. This blog post aims to do all of that at once. If you are looking for details on how to get started preserving eggs, see more here. It’s important…

Preserving eggs to share with families and the elderly

The Carbon Sink: AKA the Formal Gardens

My animals, the insects, the pond, and tree and bush trimmings create a lot of organic matter. More than my Compost bins can usually absorb. I can funnel some of it into my garden beds for developing lasagna compost beds…

Alliums in the front formal rooms.

Crickets In Glass Houses

I have been experimenting with new systems of protein synthesis and nutrition at Mezzacello. I started out with meal worms and beetles. Meal worms were high in quality protein, but they required just right difficult conditions and moisture. Additionally they…

Chickens exploring the new terrarium abode of the crickets.

Six Years of Constant Improvement and Modification

Everyone knows we started an urban farm on an inner city plot of land. What they might not realize is that we really did start from scratch. It’s the sixth anniversary of our first spring at Mezzacello. It’s also the…