An Urban Farm Midden
A midden is one important way that archaeologists and anthropologists understand a site or a culture. It what the “trash” of a site looks like. This is what an urban farm midden looks like at Mezzacello Urban Farm.
What’s In a Midden?
One of the things you will NOT find in the midden of an urban farm is metal, useful plastics, food, or tools that can be repaired. Most of this midden collection is thermoset plastics like styrofoam or ABS or bags that are not made of breathable plastics. You will also find lots of raw feed bags or raw mildly processed foods, but not processed feed.
There is good reason for this. Mezzacello Urban Farm cannot reuse thermosets properly (the two pool noodles are damaged beyond use or have been destroyed by UV exposure) or it is packaging foam from a piece of tech that was used until it was unsanitary. You’ll also find packaging for tech that is needed for the safety of livestock or plants.
What does this midden tell you from flrst glance? If we think about what we see and what we might expect to see, it’s a lot! Let’s take a deeper dive.
Materials and Resources
Why is it that there is no food in this midden? I can name three PRIMARY reasons. Maybe you can name more.
Food is a luxury that should not be wasted
Food in a midden (or in this case, trash can) is an invitation to rodents and pests
There are multiple paths for food to be reused on an urban farm (livestock and beneficial insects feed, compost, or fermentation to be used as a fertilizer, methane, or bop-accelerant)
When there IS food present in a midden it is ONLY parts of the food packaging that can’t be repurposed without confusion. The mealworms bag would confuse us, the oatmeal container was worn out and coated in plastic, so can’t be composted. The corn bags are made of useless plastic that becomes brittle with UV exposure. I would not store homemade feed pellects in a plstic bag that would harbor mold or break apart easily.
What else can we see here? Well, we know it must either be spring or winter due to the heat lamps. The leaves on the ground around the corn bag point to fall. So the urban farm must have robust systems for raising chicks in winter. and at the bottom is what is left of the last bag of rabbit pellets that will be bought at Mezzacello Urban Farm.
We now have resources to produce our own feed from weeds and unprocessed additives like corn, oats, and hay. We can feed animals from sustainable systems we can find right here on the grounds - including grass clippings. What most consider waste, we see as opportunity.
