Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and Sustainability

This UN Sustainable Development Goal is a bit easier to address. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure and Sustainability are driving forces in how I leverage resources at Mezzacello. And it always will be.

Innovation is never owned; it is rented. So keep innovating, because the rent is always due.

Jim Bruner

Of the 17 UN SDG, this one, number 9 is really important to me as an educator, scientist, and farmer. Just as hard work and economic opportunity was important, so is innovation and knowledge of what it requires to be sustainable. This is especially important in a high density urban center like the city I live in.

What Industry and Innovation Mean to Me

I am at my core a futurist. I do not traffic in scarcity, but in being clever and resourceful with how I build and sustain. I have the opportunity to invent, test, modify and share and teach. This is a powerful component of UN SDG 17.

English is a fussy and sometimes imprecise language. Take the word Industry. In English it can mean the business of building or manufacturing common goods, or being productive and useful. I am a little bit of both of these definitions.

The Hard Truth About Innovation

Innovation is not a single road with a path and a destination. It is a destination and journey upon itself. Just as a day is not a year, one innovation without a plan for how else we can leverage that is not innovation.

Years ago I came up with a simple motto for innovation. Innovation is never owned; it is rented. So keep innovating, because the rent is always due. It reminds me that innovation is an action, and it must also be sustainable.

So much of our economic and social structure is innovation for the sake of doing something new. That is OK to a point. But left unchecked it produces huge amounts of unsustainable situations that we don’t have the will or discipline to get over.

Innovation here at Mezzacello is intentionally designed to leverage information that people already have and use it in new and productive ways. I will innovate for convenience up to a point. But if I find that that innovation is actually holding people back from growing and striving, I am not sure that is always good.

When innovation is in the service of blind convenience it is a tool for for countering sustainability. This can’t be good in the long term. What do you think?

A Final Word on Infrastructure

The country where I live is currently living in a system where infrastructure has been neglected in the name of innovation for so long it is putting us at risk. In my city alone, two bridges have been damaged for so long they had to be replaced or rebuilt to prevent disaster.

If innovation is the idea, infrastructure is the body helping to do the work. I created infrastructure here at Mezzacello that keeps tools, animals, ideas, experiments and plants safe, accessible and sustainable. Low maintenance and easy to use is important.

Very much like energy, it isn’t always cheap or easy, but it is necessary. Sustainability is about optimizing what we can do today and planning for the same for later. This is why infrastructure is so very important.

Five Years of Innovation Part 1

In 2017 Mezzacello was still a nascent dream. We knew we wanted to start building out more complex integrated circuits, but we did not have funds or enough knowledge to do so. This is a blogpost detailing five years of innovation part 1.

The Pond

The biggest and most obvious innovation at Mezzacello has been the continued integration of the aquatic ecosystems. The pond at Mezzacello is much more than just water and fish. There are so many resources that go into and flow from this one ecosystem.

The pond touches every system at Mezzacello in 2022. The water is useful for watering plants and animals. The plants provide green manure for compost, a source of fiber and niacin for the ducks, and shade and shelter to the fish and pollinators.

The algae is useful as well. The original biofilter design was a store bought affair that was inadequate ins cale and power for a pond this size. The next upgrade was a homemade affair built from septic and sump cans, PVC pipe and bulkheads. It was a homemade affair that used five gallon buckets to sift out algae and denitrify the water, and legos to collect bacteria colonies.

The latest iteration of the biofilter is a much more sophisticated design. This compact unit integrates water flow, sponges, UV light and a more efficient algae cleaning treatment. The new biofilter is far more dependable and responsive than my homemade affair.

The centralized unit is also a great source of relief in that cleaning it and recycling the algae is so much easier. We added a Bakki shower denitrifying filter into the return water flow to further purify the water. These two innovations have completely transformed the pond and greatly benefited all the gardens.

Just The Right Light

This is a mid winter snap of Mezzacello from the landing of the stairs at the back of the house. What a sunset! This was taken in Just The Right Light.

This will very soon be a very different view. Over the past seven years we have transformed Mezzacello’s grounds into a true Urban Garden and Learning Lab. Now “The House” at Mezzacello is ready for her close up.

This is a poem 
to our house that began the
journey to now.

The house at Mezzacello is 168 years old. Her step-sister additions are not as resolute as our Cinderella and they need an upgrade. Stay tuned for more.

Ponds as Spigots and Nutrient Additive Systems

Today I am clearing the parterre garden bed  behind the aquatic ecosystem at Mezzacello a.k.a. the pond. I noticed that the water in the biofilters was looking pretty green. I also noticed that the irises Rick just planted along the fence to North Korea I looking pretty thirsty.

That’s when I remembered I had installed the spigot at the bottom of one of the biofilters. The addition of the spigot wasto make it easy to clean the bio filter out. But I realized in that moment that if I re-frame the bio filter as a wine cask (that’s full of really yucky wine) it is actually a tap for nutrient rich water.

Get To Work

I grabbed a watering can and turn the valve to let the water flow. Super rich Greene Al Joel water comes pouring out. I filled up the water canned five times and watered the irises. When I went back to the bio filter to feel like the fifth time, the Spicket popped out and the water flowed freely.

No big deal! Just grab a 5 gallon bucket!  Sometimes you realize that systems can be reused in unique ways because of necessity. That’s one of my favorite things about Mezzacello. It’s constantly teaching me to be creative and nimble and re-frame how are use my systems and how everything relates to everything else.

Now unless you read this blog I get to pretend like I’m a brilliant systems engineer and I designed it to be used that way. No one’s gonna know any better except for you dear Reader. Please steal my idea. Good ideas are hard to come by.