We are always aware of our intention, our effort, and our impact. Seven years in and we have learned to accept nature on her terms, and to remain grateful and open to the gifts and challenges of living as part of an intentional enclosed urban ecosystem. The most important intention is always gratitude. I am reminded of this by this powerful poem translation by 14th Century Persian poet, Rumi:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

— Rumi

This is a perfect meditation for a life lived with purpose amongst change and chaos. The moment we become angry victims in our own hearts is the moment we become MOST VULNERABLE and chaotic. It’s importabt to reframe this intention. Consider change as your rent in this world. No one lives for free, and just because you don’t know that does NOT mean there is no cost. Rumi knew this. We live this truth.

Be grateful and open to change, this season and every season. Change is the currency of nature. It cannot be collected only leveraged. Change or destroy. Like a river or a flood. It is up to us to see the wisdom and be the change.

I post a lot on here about the urban ag technology and methods I employ at Mezzacello. The fact is, I just find it all so fascinating – and counter to everything our society expects. What can I say? I am an iconoclast. I think that the fact that you need to be comfortable with failure, death, life, and ecologies and unlearn everything modern life teaches you is what attracts me so. I am a rebel with a cause; I am Shiva, the creative spark and destroyer of worlds only with a bow tie and a fedora. Yeah, I get a little crazy about it. But it’s wonderful the way social mores, biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, and math just coalesce on an urban farm. There are many days where I swear I feel the joy that the great Enlightenment scientists must have felt when they began fleshing out the roots of the modern sciences from the ruins of alchemy. The age of discovery and all that. Yeah, I identify with that.

Of all the useful items at Mezzacello, trash is one of the most productive. All trash, food and everything else – with a few toxic and material exceptions – is useful in an urban ag ecosystem. You just have to be ready for that reality mentally, physically, and spiritually.

• Mentally because it requires a new and dangerous mindset: You will become a hoarder with a desire to save everything.
• Physically because you will need systems in place to keep yourself healthy and keep nature’s pests at bay.
• Spiritually because you will need courage and fortitude to power through some of the more disgusting and smelly pathways to sustainability.

But the journey is so worth it and absolutely fascinating. It’s akin to alchemy, but you know in your heart there is no cheat against nature. House rules win every time.

This morning I turned some banana peels, used coffee grounds, and discarded egg shells into compost seed starter and fabulous soil amendment. It will have to sit for two weeks at which point I will either add it directly to fall beds or brew it with water, glucose and an airstone to create super rich liquid fertilizer. Add some uric acid and ammonia (urine) and you have liquid gold or all the makings for a bomb. THIS IS NOT FOR USE AS A BOMB. But it is a tour de force of #AppliedSTEM. No waste and the side effect is more life, sign me up! An interesting side note: Amazon’s algorithm actually called me out o some of my purchases for salts and liquid amendments I ordered online. Reminding me that certain combinations of chemicals can flag me due to provisions of the patriot act. So I end up making a lot of my own chemical amendments.

The way all the sciences cascade in this applied science experiment makes me think of one of my favorite XKCD Cartoons:

Use your powers for good – even if they stink. And there will be stink. Wink.

Why We Do Everything Ourselves

It’s not just because we are poor. The reason why we do everything ourselves at Mezzacello is because I believe in this mission. I could hire it out — but I could not maintain it.

I would never be able to do this. It takes skin in the game, the whole #AppliedSTEM reality of #Mezzacello.  

Who Owns The Future?

I truly believe that the future belongs to those who can understand the REAL costs of our food and our lives. Just an honest sustainable future. A future where food is available for the body, the soul, and the mind. #ReframeFood #TheFoodist.

Not Just a Medical/Existential Crisis

Many people may not be aware that I have a medical condition that makes my relationship to food and eating very difficult and expensive. If you’ve seen photos of me on social media laying around after meals, it’s not because I am lazy; It’s because I have the privilege to be alive and associate with family, colleagues, and gracious friends who are willing to accommodate me.

I am forced to trade time to eat. I have to lay down and digest food in exchange for the privilege of eating. I cannot remain standing after eating or I face diabetic shock and dumping syndrome.

To lay flat for 30 minutes is tough, but I get to do all the time. And I cannot eat processed food –Full stop — this means access to fresh food in my diet every day is an existential need.

That is a very expensive proposition. Just go to Whole Foods and buy your fresh food. It’s expensive. Now consider going to Kroger, Giant Eagle or even Aldi’s and buying that same food every day.

Being Healthy Requires Commitment

It’s one thing to be on a diet for a bit, but quite another thing for that to BE your diet. The bill is unsustainable. The question about why I have to do things myself becomes obvious very quickly.

It’s an economic reason. It also gives me 30 minutes to think and reflect about my condition and my relationship to food or any problem or challenge in my life three times a day, everyday. Oh, and It is also a global sustainability issue.

Global Climate Change

According to the United Nations there are three immediate impending threats as a result of global climate change:

1. water access
2. food security
3. adequate nutritional access

This is what motivates me intellectually. I need a system to insure that I have access to fresh food. But the UN is telling me this is a growing concern around the world. I’m already seeing the impact on food production in Ohio and the rest of the Midwest because of climate change.

I say act now to develop systems and strategies to create “Ag Oases” in the densely populated cities. This starts at Mezzacello. I take my systems, my ecologies, my water sources, and my resources very seriously.

Not a PREPPER!

I am not a prepper. I am an education advocate who sees a tool that can make life easier and more secure IF people are willing to put the work in. And there’s the rub.

Most people see food as easy and always there. They say the same thing about water. I may be a Cassandra, but I have experience and data on my side.

I will teach, model, entertain. But mostly I will do the work because I know what the true price of food access and security. And it is NOT cheap or Convenient!

Living Lives of Sterile Futility

I started this blog post a few weeks back. I started it in anger and I realized as I was typing furiously into my iPhone amidst the ruins of my compost bins in the alley behind my urban farm how ridiculous my situation really was. “You are all living lives of sterile futility!” I was grumbling about this, so I saved it as a draft. I can come back to it now with perspective. When I was taking apart the compost bins, I discovered three things:

1. The homeless in the neighborhood had been using the bins to hide their belongings (now wet and moldy and ruined – because they were in a compost bin).
2. The compost inside was really rich, having sat for 18 months with no turning, everything had decayed beautifully (decomposed – because they were in a compost bin).
3. The busy alley is not the place to use a cart to haul compost from an alley compost bin for use in the gardens of Mezzacello.

Every time I would get the cart full of compost, a car would come racing around the corner and startle me. trying to pull the my now stolen cart – read about that here out of the way fast would cause it to tip over. Every time. I was hopping mad. But who was I mad at? My neighbors or myself? That’s why I waited to write this blog.

I was mad at my neighbors and their “lives of sterile futility”.

• Don’t they know that it takes time and energy to empty three large compost bins of material?
• Don’t they know how heavy compost can be?
• Why are they driving down this alley while I am working?!

No they don’t, and they live here, dummy. You are the incongruous one here. You are the iconoclast living on an urban farm in the middle of downtown metropolis. They have patios and flowers. You have systems, animals, labor, and compost bins. Nothing I do at Mezzacello can be bought at Lowe’s. It has to be ordered or built.

I can buy parts from Lowe’s, but it has to withstand seasons, rain, freeze, thaw, relentless UV radiation. Additionally it is often used outside what it was originally (naively) designed for. Most people around me literally NEVER think of chicken sh*t or compost as soil. They live in a city, why would they?

I live on a 1/3 acre plot of manicured gardens and farmland in the middle of downtown Columbus, Ohio. To say I live in a bubble is an understatement.

But that’s what motivates my mission all the more. I truly believe we need to be more aware of the real costs of food and water. When we can be mindless and wasteful with no consequences we grow weak and fragile. I’m coming back to this topic because my carts were stolen last night, the same cart that kept tipping over when I was trying to get out of the way of my neighbors busily speeding along the alley – oblivious to my situation.

They weren’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong. But it is important that we both at least acknowledge each other’s existence. I can remember dictating this blog post that night over dinner to my husband Rick. I was Donald Duck – all anger and bluster.

Rick got me a beer, made me some dinner. I settled down and remembered I am the oddity. And that part of my mission is to Grow, Maintain, Sustain, and Explain the realities of urban farming. I CANNOT be mad that people are ignorant or comfortable not knowing how much work farming can be. That is the very reason Mezzacello exists. So I took a break. But I really loved the title of this blog.

The title is harsh, but the message is soft. Live your truth. But live it knowing it’s your truth and it’s real only to you. With grace and luck you’ll get to share your truth and be the change you want to see in the world.

• 

• 

•