we'll be having a workday tomorrow, from 9 to 5. We've got lots of things to do, like tomato trellising and weeding and maybe some prairie things.

Our summer potlucks have started, where together we explore issues related to agriculture, the environment, social justice, and spirituality. This Friday's (June 13th) will be led members of transition Ames, Carolyn Raffensperger and Nathan Thrailkill.

The rest of the potlucks, also on Friday, are below:

August 15: Transition from fossil fuel and resilience to climate change
August 22: Examining race and privilege, led by Mark Becker and Jason
August 29: Reestablishing tradition: praire restoration basics, led by Nate Kemperman
September 5: Exploring the co-existence of GMO's and organic agriculture, led by Bekka Brown

Dinner: 6 PM
Talk: 7 PM to 8 PM

Location: 704 Duff Ave, Ames, IA

We will have Steve Cassabaum discussing his system of livestock production and the story behind Trinity Farms near Nevada, IA. You can check out their website at http://www.trinityfarmsia.com/

Work from 1 PM to 5 PM

Location: 366 W Ave, Ames, IA (Mustard Seed Community Farm)

We've gotten our deer protection up, so will be planting lots of spring vegetables that the deer are partial to eating: kale, broccoli, kohlrabi, and a lot of onions. We also may be doing some set up of our farm for the season, setting up rainbarrels and other tasks.

Our spring is proceeding somewhat slowly, as it has been quite cold. Luckly not cold enough to completely kill the onions and leeks we've recently planted, but still pretty cold. Nevertheless, we've planted all our potatoes for the season, uncovered our strawberries, and will soon have all our cool-season crops in the ground. We're still doing a lot of work to develop our new land. Some of these projects: We'll be burning our prairie in the coming weeks and have also started at least a thousand prairie plants to transplant into perennial areas of our garden to provide pollinator and predator habitat. We've mapped out the topography of our hillier garden and have built big berms to slow and capture the water running off our farm, and will largely plant our annual beds to also capture more water before it leaves our farm (We're technically out of our drought now (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/), but are still reasonably preoccupied with on-farm water storage). We're also doing other things I can't remember.

There's a potluck this friday, December 13th.
at 704 Duff Ave, Ames, IA, 50010
at 6 PM. Following dinner, we'll have a presentation and discussion about Mustard Seed's previous year, and maybe talk a bit about our future.
Feel free to come and bring food!

post neutering.

The 2013 growing season is coming to an end. The days are getting shorter and colder. Amazingly, there hasn't been a frost yet, but the harvests are dwindling. We've stopped having our pot-lucks outside on the farm, RAchel and Craig are getting ready to move off the farm and to beautiful Dubuque. (it's been great to live with them this year - we'll all miss them!) Our experiment with a Sabbath for the soil is coming to a close, and we are planning for next year - with a CSA again, hopefully with 20 paying members and 12 working members. OUr summer kitchen natural building project has been tons of fun, the kitchen isn't done, but it's pretty awesome and we just had our first pizza party with our new oven.

winter potlucks will be once a month, in Ames proper. The first two (Oct 18 and Nov 15) are at 704 Duff Ave, Ames, IA, 50010
The time will be 6 PM dinner, 7 PM discussion
oct 18, a discussion of what makes effective altruism, led by mark Grundevelt
and Nov 15, practical lessons in knitting, mending, and maybe darning, led by Nicholas Leete and Alice
generally these potlucks might be on the 3rd Friday of the month - but December is always confusing.
more info to come

Garlic planting will be Friday oct 18, and Saturday oct 19, 9-noon, lunch, 1-5 both days. Please bring food to share if you plan on being here for lunch. This is the last big hurrah of the season, and you will probably be able to take home some of the last vegetables of the season as a thank-you for your help in this effort. PLease call Alice if you are planning to come 515-460-1467

Finally, we are planning on having a CSA for 2014. WE hope you or a friend might be interested in joining. WE realize you might have changed your loyalties since we abandoned you this year. But please remember that we haven't abandoned our mission, and we expect to grow delicious food in abundance next year. The price might be $400 for a 20 week share. Again, give Alice a call if you are interested.

much love

Tomorrow (saturday), we have a workday, getting ready for Alice and Nate's wedding, from 8 AM to noon. We chose that time because it will be cooler in the morning. However, it will also not be very hot in the afternoon as well, and not too bad on Sunday either. So if you'd like to come make our farm functional and nice looking, feel free to come saturday or sunday!