A River Ran Through It; Alum Creek, Kerr Mill, and a Farmhouse

A River Ran Through It; Alum Creek, Kerr Mill, and a Farmhouse

A River Ran Through It; Alum Creek, Kerr Mill, and a Farmhouse

Like all old houses, Mezzacello has a story. The story of Mezzacello begins its life as a residential home built next to a creek tributary of Alum Creek in 1868. Back then a river ran through It; Alum Creek, Kerr Mill, and a Farmhouse.

View the Sanborn Fire Maps for Columbus and Franklin County via the Library of Congress.

Prior to this date the land was owned by the Kerr and the Parsons families. When the first section of the house was built, it was a semi-rural house just outside Columbus proper along the old national highway, Route 40 (now Broad Street). It was a hybrid Italianate farmhouse-townhouse built next to a stream outside the city.

Borrowed Farmland and the Mill

Mezzacello would have originally been a farmhouse as food was less accessible than it is today. Any grains grown or purchased could be milled at the mill across the creek at was mostly likely was ground at the Kerr family millhouse just off Broad Street. Out buildings, outhouses, stables, and servants quarters were most likely arrayed around the house as was a summer kitchen.

The Emerging Role of the Railroad After the Civil War

The original owner was a Baltimore lawyer who was having the house built for his young cousin bride to live in. His plan (apparently) was to travel between Baltimore and Camp Chase during the year along the Baltimore-Ohio railway. We don’t know why the owner traveled so often to camp chase.

We can make some assumptions about his being a lawyer and prisoners of the Confederate state, but there are no records – yet. Columbus was becoming a central rail hub between the east coast and Chicago and Cleveland.

Always Something New

With every passing year we discover something new about this house. Finding out about the creek in what is now Avon Alley was quite a surprise. We are happy that we could return a large part of the 19th Century farm that became Mezzacello back into a farm in the 21st Century.


Sustainable Cities and Communities

Sustainable Cities and Communities

The vast majority of us live in communities. Too many of us live alone in those communities. This is contrary to sustainable cities and communities though.

A Look At Sustainability

The definition of sustainability is as follows:

Sustainability is a societal goal that broadly relates to the ability of people to safely co-exist on Earth over a long time.

Wikipedia

Maybe you don’t know what co-exist means, but it means share with equity. This is one of the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 that is both National and Global. I cannot interact globally as a single person (I am NOT Greta Thunberg) but I can and do act locally and nationally.

There are a lot of photos in that gallery above. Every last one of them has something to say about sustainability and humanity. Cities and communities are made up of resources, purpose, and humanity – and they all matter.

Being the change is as easy as accepting that you need to realign your mission and purpose to change. there is zero risk in change to you personally. We are evolved to change, we afraid of the unknown.

As I remind myself daily on a poster of part of a poem by e.e.cummings:

“Love’s function is to fabricate unknownness;
for the known is wishless — but love is all of wishing.”

e.e.cummings

Go ahead and imagine what it looks like to be the sustainable change in your family, your community, your school, your town, nation, world. Don’t be afraid to do it. But do it with love and purpose, and do not ever do it from a place of fear – after all, love is all of wishing.

More Than One Path

The City of Columbus in 2023

This is Columbus, OH (in the US) the city I live in. My farm, Mezzacello is 21 blocks east of this river and these towers. I’ll bet you are wondering what this photo has to do with sustainability, right?

Well, I’ll tell you. Look at all those paths to hope! That river is seriously prone to flooding and it causes enormous damage to the city ever 40-50 years and people have lost everything again and again.

So our mayor at the time, Michael Coleman, started a campaign to “rewild” the river that was surrounded by 8 meter (26′) tall walls. His vision was to remove all dams, and walls, and create parkland and paths that could easily absorb water in times of flood.

This has had three huge impacts: No more crazy floods, people now use and love the river, life is attracted back to the area. A simple thing like making a river beautiful can have local, regional, and national impacts on sustainability.

I am proud of this river, these parks, this city, and the things I can do within it now that I couldn’t before. Loving something makes it so much easier to be sustainable. Finding truth and beauty and then acting on it, that is sustainable.

The Role of Kintsugi

Kentsugi is an ancient art in Japan. It is when something is broken and can’t be returned to original, so we take the broken pieces and honor them to make them whole, broken, but beautiful and useful once more. This is the essence of sustainable and it is what I love about the Columbus riverfront.

They took something industrial, polluted, and dangerous. They took it apart, reframed it, and refashioned it. Now it is beautiful and useful in many more ways that it ever was originally.

That’s what we need to do in our communities and cities. Be there for everyone AND ourselves. rebuild or start to build to make something that is better than it was. Make it better for as many people as you possibly can.

Pay It Forward with Purpose

It will pay you back tenfold. And the currency will sustain you, your love and give you purpose. Purpose is the most sustainable thing a human can have – it pushes you to want to be more.

We can all use a bit of that.


Decent Work and Economic Growth and Sustainability

Decent Work and Economic Growth and Sustainability

Decent Work and Economic Growth and Sustainability is a tough one to address directly with my work on an urban farm in downtown Columbus Ohio. I have resources and access, but it is still a lot of hard work that is worth doing. I also wanted to highlight that sometimes we do work to create other things that we and our community need.

Economic Growth

What does economic growth mean? To me it means finding ways to put hard work and opportunity to play. I need work to help me make more sustainable decisions and products that I can use, trade, or sell.

I am also building a business with this effort so that makes the economic question even more pressing. I need to pay for things, find new ways to make the most of what I already have, and create opportunities. Opportunities not just for me and my family, but my community and the kids and adults that rely on me.

A Note on Waste

Waste not Want Not. That’s what Benjamin Franklin wrote nearly 300 years ago. It was also spoken by the Roman philosopher Pliny and even Confucius in China. That’s because it is a maxism.

In the city where I live, 100 tons of food is wasted and ends up in landfills. As a farmer I can tell you making, harvesting and delivering that food has a cost. A cost that is lost and wasted when we do not treat food as an economic resource.

Every three months I spend over $100 USD on rabbit, chicken, duck and fish feed to keep my animals alive. This cost would be three times that if I dod not treat waste food as a cost-saving resource. Whatever I can’t eat is available and it is safe for the animals, that’s where it goes.

That saves me large amounts of money and offers my animals access to fresh nutrients and diversity in their diets. What the animals do not eat, the worms will. Whatever else is left, is composted. This is economic sustainability.

Economics is not unlimited growth. It is a system for creating preferably sustainable equilibrium in a system. All the life here at Mezzacello shares in that goal.


My Mission Is a Better Community

My Mission Is a Better Community

My Mission Is a Better Community. That is what Grow, Maintain, Sustain, Explain (my actual mission) really means. It means learning and changing, evolving, and in general — where possible — making life better for others.

I originally posted this as a larger blog that included my thoughts on failure, but I decided to split that out. You can see it here.

When I started Mezzacello I KNEW I knew NOTHING. What I was surprised by was that even in my ignorance I was better off than most of the kids I had met. Especially the kids in the inner city who had neither access to gardens, curiosity, or courage to try.

I live in a community that is in a densely populated urban part of town. In Olde Towne East in downtown Columbus, Ohio gardens were anomalous and scattered and a FARM was a ridiculous fancy. But I had faith.

I knew the secret weapon here was going to be curiosity and wonder.

Jim Bruner

I knew the secret weapon here was going to be curiosity and wonder. Learning is a skill, and by learning more, we learn faster, usually. I was committed to learning was faster by adapting and failing faster.

Bioreactors and the Community Reaction

Well, back to community and mission. I decided three years ago I was going to fail forward into composting as a bioscience project. I studied, I experimented, collected materials, built formidable machines, and systems, and ended up covered in pre-digested bioreactor material — twice, thanks again to the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation and the PAST Foundation.

Learning and Growing

In the case of the bioreactor, my failure the first time was in fluid dynamics and the second time in pipe fittings. My neighbors and friends were confounded in what I was trying to do here. Why would you design something that was so prone to fail?

Which brings me to my last point of this blog post; you can’t build a community without people, ideas, good deeds, and work. A community is a garden, it must be tended and you must suffer the occasional loss and disappointment.

Train yourself to think of these experiences. Record them, reflect on them, share them. These are not failures, they are marks on a wall signifying growth.

Growth chart

Growth is the true heart of any garden, community, friendship, and indeed, humanity itself. No one says, I do not think I should grow anymore. What they say is, I want to be in control of that growth, with no surprises, and that is NOT how this game works.


Mezzacello 2.0 in Winter

Mezzacello 2.0 in Winter

Mezzacello in January 2022

Today was the first snow of winter. It’s been a fairly warm winter season here in Columbus, OH (US) but today was the first time you can see all the updates to Mezzacello 2.0 in winter.

We captured this shot using the DJI Mini and I love the lines of Mezzacello in the frost! The video was shot on January 7, 2022 by my niece, Sarah and she did a great job. And you can see the roof of the house is doing a good job! LOL!

Angles and Angled

One thing I do find amusing is how different Rick and I are in the way we plan. You wouldn’t know it unless you knew me, but I plan everything I build in CAD and then deploy. Rick plans his east formal gardens in his head and using simple trigonometry and stakes and strings, he gets nearly perfect geometries.

I on the other hand build out my infrastructure with great intentions, but the angles are always jumbled and the buildings are just slightly askew. I am not as attentive to details as Rick – he even advised me that my angles were askew and I tried to adjust.

You move a 2000Kg building after you have set onto a carefully planned and poured concrete slab, This isn’t chess.

Jim Bruner

Doing everything myself with the help of my community and friends, this is what I got. You move a 2000kg building after you have set it onto a carefully planned concrete slab. This isn’t chess.

The systems for power generation are also very clear in this video. The central bioreactor and its twin wind turbines sits next to the garden beds and across from the greenhouse, and the solar panels are in place on each out building. There is ample power generation being developed, now I am monitoring storage capacity in cold weather in the battery banks and inverters in those sheds.

Power systems for the garage and the house will be implemented in phase IV of the master plan. That is going to take a few extra steps and dollars to make happen. It will come, I just have to be patient.

Next Steps and Adventures

The next steps will be updating the greenhouse with power, water, and heat, and getting the processing systems in the service yard online so I can start working with other community gardens this summer. The mobile processing plans were put on hold because of COVID and some unforeseen insurance snags. But we will adapt.

In the mean time enjoy this video my niece created of Mezzacello 2.0 in winter! Happy New Year!


From Resources to Food to Waste to Resources

From Resources to Food to Waste to Resource

From Resources to Food to Waste to Resources
The Middle man of waste and resources, the gardens!
The resource pyramid for sustainability
This is essentially a manifesto for the mission at Mezzacello

When people ask, “what is Mezzacello?” My go to response is that it is an Urban Farm in a densely populated urban environment that employs agriculture, enclosed sustainable ecologies, and technology to create new pathways for food production and sustainability. We repeatedly seek to travel from resources to food to waste to resources.

Truthfully Mezzacello is a machine that maximizes the pathways from resources to food to waste to resource. Today my dear friend and mentor, Julialynne Walker just shared a story with me that led me to this graphic.

When I dug deeper into the article I discovered this inverted pyramid produced by the EPA and I was delighted! This inverted pyramid is the story of Mezzacello. I found it in a link from the Facebook article, here.

Instincts for Sustainability

Mezzacello has always been a systems-oriented passion project. The goal is to make farming make more sense, easier to sustain, and easier to implement in any environment. Key to this success has always been systems integration.

This was a no brainer: Make farming easier to manage and expand and more people would do it. I started with the knowledge that as a culture, Americans are OBSESSED with the convenience of waste. We take waste for granted and that is our greatest challenge.

The moment I reframed waste as money (and time) the trajectory of Mezzacello became very clear. Do more with less by integrating everything you do into a common goal: Decrease waste and expand resources. That is where the EPA inverted pyramid comes in.

The EPA Inverted Pyramid

The Hierarchy of Resources

In this EPA image you have a map to my mission.

  • Step 1 Reduce waste
  • Step 2 Make more food
  • Step 3 Feed and integrate animals and wastes
  • Step 4 Eliminate unnecessary waste
  • Step 5 Optimize Compost
  • Step 6 Allow for waste

Proof of Concept

In the past I have been criticized for my obsessive commitment to diminishing waste and relentlessly innovating ways to recycle, reuse, and reintegrate resources here at Mezzacello. The best way to do this is to adopt a “hoarder” mentality.

This has made Mezzacello a bit junky as I continue to innovate ways to store all of the “extra resources” I might need one day. But there has always been a method to my madness.

This summer I added a good deal of infrastructure to Mezzacello to directly deal with the messiness that an always prepared urban ag innovator will collect over time. I also added a great deal of renewable energy resources to the matrix because I was using energy that I had to pay for up front and it was limiting my sustainability.

  • Every good farmer learns how to optimize yield to effort.
  • Every good engineer learns to maximize efficiency through integrated design and implementation.
  • Every project manager learns to optimize and regulate time, resources, and budget.
  • That is what I have been relentlessly innovating towards here at Mezzacello.

The Season of the Networked Urban Gardens

This season’s primary innovation will be to leverage the infrastructure, systems, energy, and robotics, computer, and telecom assets to create “gardens of data” for other community gardens to use and deploy at their sites. The goal is to calculate what they need and what they have and find matrixes of common needs throughout the control community to be there for each other in a sustainable way.

Oh and the kids will benefit the most from this opportunity. They will be the ground team and agents of innovation for this endeavor. I will build and test the systems and then the kids will come and deploy, analyze, modify, improve and share their findings. And populate the data and research items to will create the Marauder’s Map.

The Marauder’s Map and #MischiefManaged

It’s going to be an interesting summer. Reading this tiny shared article with this amazing embedded graphic developed by the EPA is a lightening rod for me. The first project will extend the work the students did last summer in Minecraft that was a a map of Mezzacello.

The digital “Marauder’s Map” of resources at Mezzacello will be a dynamic representation of each system, resource, input, output and benefit at Mezzacello. From this prototype we will include other gardens and community resources. Over time the “Marauder’s Map” will become a valuable community resource that anyone can tap into and leverage.

Big plans, yes; but all seeds start small and grow. #MischiefManaged Stay tuned.


Mezzacello In Columbus CEO Future 50 Class of 2022

Mezzacello In Columbus CEO Future 50 Class of 2022

Mezzacello In Columbus CEO Future 50 Class of 2022
I love this photo of me. I had just come from installing sliding doors in the Livestock Shed at Mezzacello.

We are super proud at the news that Mezzacello is in Columbus CEO’s Future 50 Class of 2022. This honor is conferred to a group of individuals from throughout the city with a vision for how to make the future of Columbus better and brighter. Mezzacello’s vision for the future of urban farming was included, but that mission doesn’t end in Columbus, but it does live here.

The mission of Mezzacello has always been Grow, Sustain, Maintain, and Explain. Rick and I were determined that this mission be extendable to scale. That means not just the neighborhood, the city, but to the state, regionally, nationally, globally, and eventually interplanetary. There is no limit to this mission by design; just good science and applied STEM.

Last year Mezzacello ran programming all summer. In addition to those camps (co-sponsored by the PAST Foundation, Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation and Bronzeville Growers Market) We also ran a UN sponsored water security and food security design challenge and presented three times to 16 countries around the world on the research and innovation we’ve been developing here as part of Invent Future Global’s Global Innovation Field Trip (GIFT).

Multifaceted Interests and Missions

It’s fairly common for people to be confused about what I do for a living. I hear all the time, Are you a teacher or a farmer, or an inventor, or an artist. The answer to all of these is yes. I work for the PAST Foundation as my “day job”. Mezzacello really came about not only because of my health issues, it also evolved as an extension to the work I had started at the PAST Foundation.

Honestly, I don’t know many people whose personal and professional lives bleed into each other like mine do. I consider myself blessed and lucky. The work I started doing in 2014 with PAST was so fascinating to me, it became a passion for me personally as well. I was working as a project manager for a grant called STEM Outdoor Innovation Labs (SOIL). My job was advising schools how to build ecology and ag-focused centers at their schools.

Applied STEM for the Win

There were so many great ideas and strategies that were being explored, bust schools just couldn’t maintain the trajectory. They lacked infrastructure and commitment throughout the summer to really develop the systems and strategies. By creating a SOIL facility at Mezzacello I could continue to experiment and develop the ideas and strategies and innovate further.

Each season I explore a new facet of community gardens, biotechnology, agriculture, robotics, and bio and technology systems integration. The last two years it has been in soil health and renewability. This season will be advanced robotics and alternative power generation. All of this will be critical if we want to create sustainable and fertile food oases in our cities.


Sharing Your Chicken TV On An Urban Farm

Sharing Your Chicken TV on an Urban Farm

To the right I am installing an art piece, but it’s tarp covering the chickens that gets the most attention!

Today we are talking about Chicken TV On An Urban Farm. If you have ever had chickens, regardless of where, you are aware of Chicken TV. There are YouTube Channels! Chicken TV is just watching chickens hunt and peck and wander.

It’s a bit different on an urban farm, because there are so many more predators. Conversely, there is also a larger audience watching because the Chicken Run is a large screen Chicken TV. I was considering building an art installation or mural on the western shed, but it seems the chickens are far more interesting!

What I Learned During Work From Home

During COVID19 Lockdown over 2020 and 2021 I realized the chickens and ducks have a broad audience here at Mezzacello. I realized working from home that many of my neighbors make it a point to stop and visit the chickens.

Admittedly it’s not common to see chickens in downtown Columbus, but it’s more than that. People have begun to see the poultry as part of the neighborhood. These are the people I call the chicken whisperers.

Who Are The Chicken Whisperers?

I was seeing it again and again. The people that go out of their way to talk to the chickens:

  • The dog walkers
  • The students walking to school
  • The nurses, doctors and patients in the clinic
  • The public dog treatment events in the parking lot
  • The paper shredding company
  • The AT&T and AEP Pole Repair crews
  • Just random people

All of them take time to interact with the chickens in my large screen Chicken TV that faces the alley. I also know this is true because of the response to the green tarp to shield the chickens and ducks from the harsh sunlight.

Are The Chickens All Right?

Every time I am out in the yard over the past week I get this question again and again. Are the chickens all right? Do you still have the chickens? Yes, yes! The run is now 3 meters tall, so it allows FAR more sunlight into the run and the poultry need more shade.

I grabbed the first thing I had on hand — a green tarp to give them shade. But the feedback from the public has been immediate. We miss the chickens! And so I went out after like the 10th comment and took a photo and it is jarring.

So now I must find a compromise. How do I shield my animals and give the animals much needed shade? My first instinct is a tarp, but the neighbors and visitors hate it. What should I do?

The euonymus hedge is slow growing to the south of the chicken run, but it’s going to be a minute before it’s full. I am also getting pushback that people will “miss talking with the chickens” if the hedge gets too thick.

What Do You Lot Think?

So let’s brainstorm together. What are your thoughts? If you’ve driven past Mezzacello, or if you have experience what would you suggest? Do I just use white lattice all across? Do I use screen that you can see through? Do I not allow the hedge to grow there? A piece of public art? Share your thoughts!


The Rule of Sustainability – 3 and 5 Strategy

The Rule of Sustainability – 3 and 5 Strategy

The Rule of Sustainability – 3 and 5 Strategy

Sustainability is a really important topic in the world right now. We need more of it, but we need better metrics to define what “it” is. Like the word, “nice” sustainability means many different things to many different people. At Mezzacello I have developed a rule of thumb that helps me better define sustainability. I call it the Three and Five Strategy. It is really quite simple.

  • Incorporate at least three other ecosystems or resources from Mezzacello.

  • MUST provide at a MINIMUM five new unique resources to Mezzacello.

  • Three in — Five out and all within one 18 month period of time.

This has eliminated all precious things from my farm. Nothing withers or remains alive through hard labor or constant vigilance. No extraordinary measures need to be taken. If one input is compromised, it can be substituted but only temporarily and not constantly; never constantly. If the systems cannot sustain that ecosystem, then that ecosystem lacks merit. Let me provide two examples. One from the natural world and one from Mezzacello.

Natural World: The human nose

Inputs:

  1. Allows the sinus cavity to exist and remain at atmospheric pressures
  2. Allows air to be purified through the cilia and mucus membranes
  3. Provides protection via the senses (proprioceptor and Olfactory Nervous Systems)
  4. Incorporates the lymphatic and immune response factors readily as a first line of defense

Outputs

  1. Provides the sensation of smell and taste
  2. Pressurizes and maintains the esophagus and bronchial cavities
  3. Provides mucus for multiple parts of the respiratory system
  4. Preserves moisture to the body
  5. Allows the eyes to remain equidistant and focused for bipedal vision
  6. Gives the human face character
  7. Keeps the cartilage and skin of the face under tension
  8. Holds glasses on your face
  9. Secretes fats and toxins from the body
  10. Cools/heats the brain cavity directly
  11. Allows the palette to remain dynamic and flexible
  12. Home to beneficial bacteria and immune response factors
  13. Serves as an early warning system in the case of impact to the face
  14. Allows the lips to purse and tense by providing cartilage and structure

Mezzacello: The Formal Gardens

Inputs:

  1. Provides biomass seasonally on demand
  2. Gives shelter, food and attraction to beneficial pollinators and birds
  3. Provides shelter, privacy, and protection to all the inhabitants of the farm
  4. Gives a sense of beauty and place to the neighborhood
  5. Attracts interest in our mission here at Mezzacello

Outputs:

  1. Biomass
  2. A carbon sink for compost
  3. Flowering shrubs and flowers
  4. Shoots and berries that are edible
  5. A place for the poultry to forage for pests
  6. Shade and moisture
  7. Cooling drafts and whimsy
  8. Succor for the mind and spirit
  9. Attracts beneficial microbial life, bacteria and fungus to the surrounding ecosystems
  10. Improves the diversity of compost and fertilizers
  11. Provides a sense of pride and purpose
  12. Deflects noise from a busy main thoroughfare
  13. Increases the amount of molecular oxygen and moisture to surrounding ecosystems
  14. Provides protection from the east, north, and south from pathogens in the wind stream

So now when I plan any new system at Mezzacello, it MUST incorporate at a MINIMUM THREE inputs and FIVE carefully chosen outputs/benefits to all of the six systems at Mezzacello. If any one of those 14 benefits seems frivolous to you, I ask that you re-examine your priorities. During COVID19 lockdown, every single one of them became incredibly valuable and obvious to me. Through reflection, effort, and application, sustainability thrives.

Count your blessings,
but remember blessings are positive
so never divide or subtract;
just add and multiply.

Jim Bruner


Redefining Mezzacello

Mezzacello is more than an urban farm. It is more than a group of enclosed sustainable ecosystems. It is also a learning lab dedicated to advancing and innovating agricultural and technology solutions for urban food deserts. That takes improvements in infrastructure and resources. Over the past two weeks I have been pulling down buildings and coops, grading the land, and building forms for new concrete pads for new outbuildings.

I have a grant for the improved infrastructure but I did not fully grasp the scope of the under structures. In Mezzacello 1.0 I made the foundations as I went and using stones. This enabled pests and rodents to nest and was not always level. Mezzacello 2.0 will have better infrastructure; water, power, lab space and a media lab. I am learning that construction is tough work (spoiler alert: I built all of Mezzacello myself). I am learning that construction schedules are erratic and annoying. But I am on my way. The next post will be about the specific changes I need to make.