Health and Wellness Through Sustainability

Health and Wellness Through Sustainability

Health and Wellness Through Sustainability
Chinese astronauts doing Tai Chi in Earth Orbit.
Teaching Tai Chi on Earth at Mezzacello

Addressing health and wellness through sustainability is actually easier and far more integrated than one might imagine. Health and wellness mean more than just physical or mental. Take for example during the COVID-19 lockdown.

…health and wellness and happiness are active choices. We seek them out and they sustain us so we can sustain others.

Jim Bruner

Mental health is wildly important. That is one of the things I love about the ecosystems at Mezzacello. It afforded me a space and a safe place during COVID19 to keep my body and mind healthy. It also allowed me to help others do the same, which is a cornerstone of sustainability in my opinion, like teaching Tai chi.

The enclosed ecosystems at Mezzacello make it really easy to do a variety of different things all focused on health and wellness. There’s the farming, the maintenance, there’s the care for the animals, there’s the endless digging, and there’s the opportunity to exercise in an enclosed park. The sustainability allows for all of this.

Access and Action to Achieve Sustainability

I understand not everybody has this level of access. But health and wellness and happiness are active choices. We seek them out and they sustain us so we can sustain others.

In truth the real relationship between health and wellness is this ability to understand our role in the world and persevere. We are not victims of our happiness; we are authors. We may not be always happy but we do need opportunity, freedom, and perspective on what wellness means to us.

Creating a world where this choice is even an accessible is what we’re really talking about here. Purpose, health, love, dreams, desire, and opportunity. These are what we build sustainable health and wellness programs around.

Keeping the spirit and body strong when the world is unfair

What does this have to do with tai chi? The privilege I have I’m not only knowing tai chi but the opportunity to teach it gives me music and helps others build systems to manage their fear their anxiety their health and their body. It is my tool to keep my goals in mind and my spirit strong.

Pain is an evitable, suffering is a choice. Health and wellness are important individual and social constructs. The fact that I get to share something I love and help others is what makes this is sustainable goal for me.

it all goes back to my three and five philosophy. Whatever you put into a system should be designed and managed so that you always get more than what you put in. This is the core of sustainability.

For me tai chi is a sustainable goal. What I and others get from it is far beyond what has to be put into it. that is the lesson of tai chi; become the solution by being one with the issue. I think that’s why I chose tai chi for this topic.

and speaking of being more than just the problem or the solution. How cool is that photo ‘Chinese astronauts on Shenzou space station doing tai chi 180 miles above the earth. Regardless of where you are, the truth remains true.


Update on Storage and Preservation

Update on Storage and Preservation

Update on Storage and Preservation
Later winter preservation of roots and the end of the onions.

This year I moved the wire mesh preservation shelves from the cellar stairs and into the (messy) cold storage room behind the kitchen. There is far less moisture in the atmosphere in this room. So it is time for an update on storage and preservation of food at Mezzacello.

In the past I have had real problems with rot and mold, so I switched to just root vegetables and onions. This year I learned that I can store wet vegetables like squash and apples; don’t let them touch and allow air to flow around them.

So this summer I will once again produce squashes and apples, as well as lemons and oranges and use this same system for storing them as long as I can. This is definitely a much better way to store food over time.


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.