Our Mission and Beliefs
Mission Statement
Mustard Seed Community Farm is dedicated to sustainable, simple living, love of our neighbor, and creating a community in which everyone can participate in growing and eating delicious, healthy, locally produced food. Our farm is a part of the Catholic Worker movement, which is an interfaith, inclusive, social justice movement. We welcome persons of all backgrounds, spiritual beliefs, genders and sexualities.
We are a volunteer-run, not for profit, service project. Our primary focus is growing food to share, but we also have a strong education and community-building program, focusing on social justice, ecological living, human scale economics, and farming. We have been in operation since 2008.
At Mustard Seed Farm, we believe that everyone deserves really good food. Without complete nutrition, it is hard to function at our full human potential. We believe that a great diet allows people to be more healthy, happy, and able to participate with great enthusiasm, generosity, and creativity in our community and world.
Located ~15 miles northwest of Ames, IA, we have a small CSA and also grow food for the shelters and soup kitchens in the area. We also deliver gift boxes directly to families' homes and partner with the Farm to Clinic gift food and nutrition program. If you would like to see some more details about how we have distributed food in past years, check out these informative
Our Beliefs
We believe in…
Service to our community
- Growing good food for those in need
- Solidarity with the poor – living in simplicity and in service
- Growing good food for sale/ CSA
- Community events
- Crop Rotation
- Green manure and cover crops
- Permaculture and perennial crops
- Beneficial insect and animal habitat
- Erosion control
- Protection of waterways
- No harmful petrol-derived pesticides, herbicide, or fertilizers
- Hospitality to the those in need
- Hospitality for learners
- Spiritually open and nurturing
- Education about farming, environmental, social justice issues through roundtable discussions and work
- Cooperative decision making/ Consensus
- Leadership to each in arenas of passion or expertise
- Respect for the dignity of all beings
- Resisting the works of war
- Kindness, patience, and humor
- Decrease our dependence on fossil fuels: walk, bicycle, solar and wind power, manual labor, conservation
- Growing our own food vegetables, fruit, grains, protein
- Green building practices
Land stewardship
In contrast to predominate modern farming practices we are trying to farm in a way that rebuilds and creates living soil. We attempt to balance multiple interconnected farming methods in order to create a farming system that closely mimics nature.
Hospitality
Nonviolence
Sustainability
