At this point, we've got several potlucks scheduled, see below:
7/20 – Feminism-pictured at right
7/27 – Alternative banking and the national debt
8/3 Gleaning
8/10 The importance of soils to humans
8/17 Tar sands and fracking
8/24 Greenhorns movie
8/31 The ethics of hunting

The potlucks during the summer occur every Friday at the farm (366 W Ave, Ames, IA 50010), with soccer from 5 to 6, dinner from 6 to 7, and discussion on the topic from 7 to 8. As always, the potlucks are open to the public, so feel free to bring friends. Also, feel free to come to one part or all of the evening, so don't feel bad coming for just the soccer, the dinner, or the talk!

Also, as noted in the post below, it's been and continues to be quite dry. Since we spend a good portion of our time watering, we'd like your help with the other farm tasks. We've scheduled 3 workdays for the next few weeks, early in the morning to best cope with the heat:

Saturday, July 21st, from 8 to noon,
Saturday, July 28th, from 8 to noon,
Sunday, August 5th, from 8 to noon.

If you'd like, bring along some food to eat or share and stay for lunch afterward.

from weather.gov, their graphical forecast

this is alice, with only a few minutes to write - i'll write more about this soon. we just sent in some air and water samples from our farm to learn more about pesticide drift. this picture is from june - you can see our air sampler and the herbicide sprayer in action. we're doing a pretty cool data collection project with Pesticide Action Network and Practical Farmers of Iowa.

Farm Update
Potlucks
Workdays

this is an email that nicholas wrote, with edits and additions from alice.

Farm Update
The farm continues to exist. Though we've gotten a bit of rain, it is still pretty dry. (alice heard a rumor that iowa is officially in a drought - not sure if this is true, but it's really dry. )We've just started harvesting our green beans this morning and our peas have finished. Our garlic is drying and we've started harvesting onions and other things.

Potlucks

In this newsletter:

Farm Update

Potlucks and Soccer

Workdays (Garlic Harvest)

Click read more to see the full newsletter

Above are some nest that have formed this year. At left is the tail feathers of a barn swallow sticking out of their nest, in which the eggs are yet to hatch, at center is the nest of some robins that tried to nest in our tool lean-too, but we were able to move their nest, along with the hoe it was on into a nearby mulberry tree, and 2 of 3 eggs have hatched, and at right is the nest of a goose, in the hollow of an oak branch that was downed a few years ago. The goose picture is the oldest, the nest has now been abandoned, and we think a hawk or fox killed either the parents or just the babies.
After that is some of workcrew from our workday on saturday.

I forgot to take a picture of the first CSA box, which was a bit more substantial, but here's one of last Friday's: