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.


Ohio Farm Bureau 2021 Annual Report

Ohio Farm Bureau 2021 Annual Report

Ohio Farm Bureau 2021 Annual Report
Mezzacello Urban Farm in the 2021 Ohio Farm Bureau Annual Report

I was surprised and delighted that Mezzacello Urban Farm was a highlight of the Ohio Farm Bureau 2021 Annual Report. I really loved working with them last year. And working with the kids, parents, schools, communities, and businesses was a privilege and learning opportunity for me.

The OFB ExploreAg Program Rocks!

ExploreAg at OFB

I want to highlight the OFB ExploreAg program. I have been involved with this program for a few years and I have met some amazing young people in this program!

They continue to serve as inspirations and mentors to me on social media and at OFB events. These bright young ag-minded people inspire me to look at issues and problems in unique and innovative ways.

If you can at all, get involved with or support this program. It is such an important and ongoing program and is very dear to my heart – and mission – at Mezzacello.

Local Collaboration and Support

A huge shout out to The PAST Foundation for serving as my fiscal sponsor while I am waiting for my 501c3 status to clear. Also a shoutout to Bronzeville Agricademy, and Highland youth Garden. They kept me grounded and extended my mission greatly, even during pandemic.

It makes me proud to see what I did in print. It transformed Mezzacello completely. And through that transformation, I am committed to continuing to leverage that grant opportunity to create meaningful change in my community, and around the world as well.

Global Reach

Last year I shared the research and programming I was doing at Mezzacello with global audiences through the UN Food Challenge and through the Invent Future Global Innovation Field Trip; 200 kids from 16 countries all around the world. That was thrilling.

Growth, Health, and Change

But mostly it was thrilling that I get to leverage my unique health crisis, my passion for Applied STEM and my home to make meaningful and replicable change.

Change in my neighbor, my city, my region, nation and ultimately the world. I am a very lucky person and I am ready for even more transformation!

This year, I am continuing to innovate, run summer camps and as a member of the Columbus CEO Magazine’s #Future50 2022 cohort, I expect even more innovation and change!


The Role of Failure in Learning

The Role of Failure in Learning

Failure is a universal way to learn and grow.

Failure Is Fear on Loan

When talking about the role of failure in learning I think this speaks to the truth, at least for me, at what failure represents. For many failure is the great Unknown. The dark, the embarrassment, the potential financial loss, the loss of innocence.

This post is originally in another blog post, but I decided to pull it out. View that blog post here.

If we had really been born afraid of failure, we would never grow.

Jim Bruner

The irony is that at some point in your life (babies, childhood, young adult) the whole wide world was a big unknown. If we had really been born afraid of failure, we would never grow. Search your feelings; you know this to be true.

So where does the human fear of failure come from? The Psychologists, Anthropologists, Economists, Historians, Poets, and Parents all have a different ideas. Regardless, failure is a powerful tool, the trick is in the dose.

There is an old maxim; The dose makes the poison, right? (Paracelsus was more eloquent than I!) Again, the irony is that failure isn’t even a poison, it’s just convenient to think about it as poison. Like poison, most of us fear it.

Stop being afraid to fail and grant yourself some grace. Reframe failure as a horizon of knowledge and you’ll be surprised how quickly poison transforms into promised land. Then walk through it and to it.

Don’t Borrow Worry, or Fear Failure

Do not buy or borrow worry or fear failure. All things in their time and season. As a farmer I take what I get and return what is required. I do not hold regrets.

Regret is the one edit that has zero meaning in life. This is because it cannot be acted upon, only learned from. Dwelling on regret is buying worry – and fortune and time cannot be brokered or bought.

I have had the great fortune of nearly dying — twice. It changes and shifts your perceptions. You learn to accept things, you can be cross or grateful, but we are never really in control, except for our response and our attitude, right?

So no, I do not CHASE failure, but I do embrace it and make it a learning opportunity. I do this and I demand all the people I mentor do this as well. We gamble with our boldness and the real art of life and agriculture is learning to make promises you CAN keep and not betting against the farm, or Mother Nature.


Pretty versus Plentiful with Ducks and Chickens

Pretty versus Plentiful with Ducks and Chickens

Chickens and ducks making short work out of my cold frame at Mezzacello.

The poultry need to be isolated with new plant growth. Full stop. Formal gardens are off limits while my potager gardens and fruit trees look like the surface of the moon. It’s time to sequester the chickens and ducks.

Chicken Scratch

Chickens scratch, but ducks devour. I’ve talked about the enclosed ecosystems of Mezzacello frequently. As I type this, I am sitting in front of the aquatic ecosystem listening to the biofilter pumps wreck havoc on the balance of algae, water, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, and fish.

Garden Felons

The ducks are peeking their bills through the picket fence in the poultry yard like the garden felons they are.  In the pretty gardens (AKA formal gardens at Mezzacello) the tender shoots are just coming up. This is irresistible to ducks.

Just a few weeks, felons, I mean fellas, and I’ll let you forage in the yards for bugs again.

It might seem hypocritical of me to be enjoying a quiche made from duck eggs, pancetta, gruyere, Parmesan, and pan seared hosta shoots. Yes, we eat the hosta shoots – but in my defense, we eat them discriminately.

The ducks eat ALL of them. And to add insult to injury, they eat all the water lettuce and water hyacinth in the pond as well – and their oils pollute the pond. The nerve! LOL!

Enclosed Ecosystems

No, the animals need sequestered while the humans manage the patient dance from winter to spring with the more delicate plants in the pretty ecosystems. Meanwhile the ducks and chickens get extra servings of mealworms, peas and crickets, the rabbits get fresh clover and kale, and the fish get frozen peas and rabbit droppings.

I am not a monster; I give when I take. That is the cycle of life on an urban farm.