Design Challenge: Build a Gate

Design Challenge: Build a Gate

Design Challenge: Build a Gate
Sign that reads: Keep Gate Closed. No matter what the chickens say.

In this design challenge: build a gate we discuss the design, implementation, and constraints of a gate. We will explore all aspects of the gate. We’ll look at pattern, structure, and process to function, locking and hinges.

What Are The Basics?

When we think about gates is the open and close, locking, and unlocking the most important part? Are all gates the same? How are they different?


Take the time to research the words gate and fence. In English they can mean many things! How many definitions of gate and fence are their, even homonyms!


When a gate is closed is it then part of the fence or is it still a gate? Can we have a gate without a fence? Do gates have to close to be considered a gate?

The Challenge

Materials

  • Timer
  • Three Types of Materials (Cardboard, wood, steel)
  • Fasteners (String, Bolts, Pipe Cleaners)
  • A pre-built armature to mount a gate to
  • Duck Tape

Directions

  • Each team will be given a set of materials and a whiteboard
  • The problem is: How do we protect baby ducklings from escaping and getting eaten by hawks?
  • The team will have 10 minutes to brainstorm and start to build.
  • After 10 minutes, all hands go up and the object is COMPLETELY disassembled and then each team switches.
  • They will then have 7 minutes to build their object. After that seven minutes, the hands go up and the team must again disassemble that object.
  • After that 7 minutes, teams switch again and now they will be given 5 minutes to construct this new object. They can be not be talking to or help offered by each team.
  • After 5 minutes, hands go up and we will consider the state of construction.

The team with the most successful builds is the winner of the design challenge. The team with the least successful builds will be asked to give a five minute presentation to the entire camp on why they were unsuccessful and what they plan to do to become better. Remember to use the Design Cycle!

Educational Outcomes

The goal here is teamwork and learning to adapt and modify on the fly.

Given a set set of materials students in each team will have 10 minutes to consider a group of objects and figure out how the items go together. In addition to building they must also observe other teams building to determine the fastest way to build that next item.


Design Challenge: Why Do Animals Panic?

Design Challenge: Why Do Animals Panic?

Design Challenge: Why Do Animals Panic?
Everyone needs to get along.

In this Design Challenge: why do animals panic? we explore the factors that cause animals to panic. These will include the animal’s psychology, vision system, living habits, and social orders. Let’s dig in and learn about these animals!

The Basics of Animals

All animals react on instinct and basic awareness of their general environment. The placement of the eyes and ears makes a big difference as well. Their diet will influence their tendency to panic as well.

Birds see things quite differently from mammals like you and me. Their eyes evolved to sense mostly motion. This is why you will often see chickens or ducks bobbing or turning their heads.

Chickens prefer roosting in higher areas or being under cover. They prefer to look down over looking up. They feel most comfortable when they are in a tight confine with clear vision in front of them and nothing behind.

Ducks see slightly better, but still rely mostly on movement recognition. Their eyes are more bulbous (rounded) so they have better peripheral vision than say chickens. Their long necks make swiveling to see in wider arcs easier for them as well.

Rabbits are also instinctive animals and their metabolism (like birds) is very high – so their hearts beat very fast. Rabbits can see most color, but still rely heavily on sensing motion over objectively seeing something and recognizing it. A rabbit will always head towards darkness over bright, open areas.


Spring 2021 at Mezzacello

Well it’s nearly Easter in this year after COVID19. My enclosed sustainable ecosystem is readying itself to come back to life. I decided this cold sunny day was the perfect day to record Mezzacello.

This is right before it goes through it’s next big expansion. So here is a little slideshow from April 1, 2021. Let me know if you have any questions. There is some bit of trivia or an active experiment going on in everyone of these photos.


Giving Back to Sustainability for Lint

Four years ago we decided we were to dedicate our efforts across all domains to sustainability. We refer to it as an enclosed Sustainable ecosystem network. There are many pathways that enable and insure those networks remain viable and renewable. This requires that we reframe waste. Not as an inconvenience or troubling afterthought; but as a valuable resource. This is one of the most valuable waste streams at Mezzacello. Humble lint.

We pull it off our clothes, linens and rugs. We used to throw it away. But then I saw the multiple functional pathways lint could be useful for:

  1. birds nests
  2. holding moisture in potting soil
  3. carbon in compost
  4. catching and housing algae and microbes in the biofilter
  5. bedding for baby chicks
  6. bedding for baby rabbits
    holding water safely for crickets
  7. great padding on hangers
  8. holding peanut butter and lard for sueT
  9. helping seeds thrive as it holds water and fertilizer close to the seed
  10. creating sachets to keep moths away in closets, especially when you add cedar oil and lavender

There is more I am sure. I haven’t encountered it yet. What would you use lint for? Share it with me. Make me better!

 


The Most Beautiful Compost

My favorite aspect of Mezzacello is the #ZeroWaste strategy we strive to employ here. Nothing is whimsical; if you have nothing to add to the greater welfare of the ecosystem you have no purpose here. Rick and I violate this principle on occasion, because sometimes you just need to rest LOL!. But for the rest of the five enclosed ecosystems, there is a role that is played. You grow, you display your beauty, utility, or use, and you expire and go back into the system. For humans this is a Dickens/Dystopian nightmare, but for the natural world it is the rule of law. If these hydrangea were growing in the wild they would be deer food or forest floor in 8 more months. Reason through this reality. These hydrangea exist in all of their glorious abundance BECAUSE other plants and animal wastes were collected, distributed and transformed into life. Sit with that for a moment.

Last summer I was running urban ag camps here at Mezzacello. The kids loved it! This Is My Why what’s not to love? One of my favorite memories was a 10 year old girl who COULD NOT wrap her mind around the idea that compost is a way of deconstructing matter into forms that nature could reuse. Well, I took that to heart. I showed her and 100 other kids That:

  • fish and pond wastes
  • tree, bush and plant leaves
  • rabbit, chicken and duck wastes
  • the grass
  • the vegetables and fruit
  • the beautiful hedgerows
  • even the pretty flowers in the vase on the table

All have a dual purpose. NHCOPS (Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulphur) are universal. Something can be USEFUL and BEAUTIFUL at the same time. In fact, the most exquisite things are.

#ProjectMartian is winding down. I am compiling the final report. I am proud of these ecosystems as much as I am proud of those kids last summer that saw the line that unites life and death and twists the middle of that circle to create infinity. Life on another planet does not have to be done at the cost of transcendence or beauty; it’s not a grim affair. Their is as much opportunity for joy and hope as there is for fear and anxiety. The trick is being comfortable with the magic in between.


The Foodist: Perfect Pan-Roasted Chicken

The Foodist: Perfect Pan-Roasted Chicken

The Foodist: Perfect Pan-Roasted Chicken
Roast chicken with rosemary, thyme and lemon glaze.

This The Foodist: Perfect Pan Fried Chicken is a favorite around here! It is equally good in the summer as it is in the winter. To shake things up, consider adding fruits to this dish to transform from a savory dish to a sweet one.

We generally serve this with a salad of fresh greens and a fresh vinaigrette or with sweet peas and mashed potatoes. This dish should be served in the cast iron pan as it looks so very dramatic. Make this to applause for your family or dinner guests.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 6 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (about 2 1/4 pounds)
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1 tbsp chopped Rosemary
  • 1/2 Tbsp chopped fresh Thyme,
  • 1 Tbsp Chopped Parsley
  • 2 Tbsp Lemon zest or juice
  • Salt and Pepper (fresh cracked is best)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Preheat oven to 475°.
  2. Heat oil in a 12″ cast-iron or heavy nonstick skillet over high heat until hot but not smoking.
  3. Rinse and dry chicken, then season chicken with salt and pepper.
  4. Nestle chicken in skillet, skin side down, and cook 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-high;
  5. Continue cooking skin side down, occasionally rearranging chicken thighs and rotating pan to evenly distribute heat, until fat renders and skin is golden brown, about 12 minutes.
  6. If available add your herb to the chicken. Arrange atop the chicken.
  7. Transfer skillet to oven and cook 13 more minutes. Flip chicken; continue cooking until skin crisps and meat is cooked through, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer to a plate; let rest 5 minutes before serving.

Serves 2 TO 4 [MAIN-COURSE]


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 sixth anniversary of my learning every agriculture skill I have learned. From trial and error, best guesses (so many wrong guesses), interviews with farmers, secular and Amish, county extension managers, and lots and lots of YouTube videos. Here is a little visual journey of my #SkillsReset from Programmer, Designer, and Project Manager to Urban Farmer.

Well, Happy spring 2020! #COVID19 sucks, but I have a farm to run and food to plant, raise and harvest. Share some of your favorite homestead photos with me! Or follow along on my journey and start your own urban garden! If you’re allergic to hard work, failure, or adventure, well you’re out of luck. But if not… Then adventure and life awaits!


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 required a lot of food. So much food that I was starving out my worm ecosystem. Then I came upon crickets. Actually crickets are a very good choice.

When I was a young boy growing up California both in the Los Angeles valley and later in the Mojave desert. I was terrified of crickets and their larger cousins, grasshoppers. They would swarm by the thousands and jump mindlessly EVERYWHERE! I was also afraid of spiders. It would creep me out to see 10 crickets trapped in a single spider’s web. The fat, well fed spider dashing all about wrapping crickets in silk. That spider had it right. Crickets are prolific breeders and consume a wider variety of food scraps. Recently I fed them pumpkin innards and they ate everything away leaving gleaming pumpkin seeds (I learned that from watching the TV show “Bones”) And side benefit; the chickens, ducks, and fish love them. They also dry, store, and bake easily.

Recently I committed to be a #FutureFood Experience Partner with the PAST Foundation for the 11/2/2019 Fundraiser, #STEMofSpirits. I needed 1,000 additional crickets quickly. I have 800 on hand at any given moment at Mezzacello, but I needed more. So I ordered them off of Amazon and put them in a glass terrarium under a heat lamp until I am ready to process them (if that peaks your interest let me know) I underestimated the impact this glass enclosure would have on the poor chickens and ducks who have never experienced glass. Eventually I had to move the crickets into the greenhouse because those silly birds kept thunk, thunk, thunk – pecking at the glass for a tasty cricket. Part of being a good farmer is knowing how to gently introduce a new ecosystem into an existing ecosystem. What I have learned is that greed, hunger, and hope are far stronger than memory, reason or learning. I have more empathy for my sweet, stupid birds now. Also, I really like the glass terrarium model over the black plastic box model. It is so much easier to sanitize and process crickets in glass than plastic. Hit me up for some great cricket-based recipes. See you at #STEMofSpirits! https://www.pastfoundation.org/stem-of-spirits/


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 to grow vegetables and herbs into, but that still leaves organic matter. That’s why I have reframed Rick’s formal gardens as “The Carbon Sink” in the fall and winter. I can amend that soil with mulch and compost and get it back the following year.

Most people assume the Formal Gardens are there for s show — and they are not wrong. But in nature ecosystems rarely have one role. The same is true at Mezzacello. It’s not enough to be pretty; you also have to absorb waste and provide nutrients back to the larger ecosystem. Even the most beautiful bouquet of flowers will be compost eventually.


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 to me that food, water, energy, and even waste not be wasted. I know we are a wasteful society. I try but even I have limits.

it used to annoy me to no end when fresh eggs would go bad after sitting for two months. I hated throwing them out, or processing them into the wormery, or grinding the shells into the topsoil. One of the best ways to check for the freshness of an egg is to see if it floats. If it does not immediately sink to the bottom of a bucket of water, then it has air or gas inside it. If the egg has air or gas inside it, then the shell has lost integrity and bacteria have begun feasting on the interior contents, creating CO2. The beauty of preserving eggs in this fashion is that it is IMMEDIATELY obvious if an egg goes bad; note that all of these eggs are on the bottom of the bucket.

This system was introduced to me by an Amish man at a farmers market here in Columbus. The physics, chemistry, and biology is quite straightforward. The eggs MUST be clean and fresh. They must also have a natural bio bloom (so do not wash them) the distilled water keeps foreign chemicals and solutions out of the egg and preserves the freshness. The molecular lime bonds with the calcium on the shell and then the two create a strong bond to protect the egg’s contents. So far it works like a charm!

If you are curious about the color, the tan and buff eggs are chicken eggs, the white eggs are duck eggs. These keep beautifully. Just as fresh as the day they were hatched. Now my eggs never go to waste. Now when a family comes to me in crisis, I have reserves. Maintain and Sustain indeed!