Hello Everyone!

(if you are skimming - my summary is that there are 2 schedules in this email - 1. pot-lucks, and 2. Farm-labor-share work days. 2 events: this friday and saturday)

My name is Luciano Garofalo (I go by Looch) and the Lady of the Onions pictured below is Emily Boston. We recently moved here from Tacoma, WA, to work at Mustard Seed, learn more about food, and build community with the wonderful folks here! We had previously been working in L'Arche (www.larchethc.org), an intentional community for adults with and without developmental disabilities. I lived in and managed one of our four homes, and Emily worked on our community's organic farm.

I started some leeks this week, but besides that our farm work is still mostly planning, splitting wood, and working on the insides of the house. HOwever, we do have some great events coming up this month.

Sunday Feb 13th, 2pm at the Ames public library - a free concert by the Porch Stompers (featuring farm members nate and alice) this is also alice's birthday.

Alice has returned to the farm, after being away for the first half of January in Honduras, on a service trip with the Dubuque Franciscans, and then in Dubuque at a Catholic Worker craft retreat. Here are some pictures and reflections from the trip. However, there were a lot of other folks there, and a number of them have already written about it, and so I'm going to cut and paste some of their thoughts also.

the stove pictures are from before the stovepipe was installed, so here we are using it as a counter for electrical appliances!

we are having a pot-luck this friday dec 17 at 6pm.
HOWEVER, it is NOT at the the previously posted location, nor planned topic. Carolyn will be out of town, and will instead be hosting the february pot-luck and leading with her global warming, community resilience, food growing topic at that time.

our house isn't done yet, but this is what it looks like now.
Sunday, september 26th, we're having a party.

Yes, there are other things happening that day, like the barnowl band concert, and maybe an art-fair in ames, but nonetheless, we hope you will also come see us.
1;30-3;30pm: digging
if you want to experience sweet potatoes in their entirety, you can help us finish our harvest. please bring a shovel or digging fork, and clothes that like to get dirty.
4pm : House blessing
4:30pm: pot-luck.

(some text/illustration by nicholas)

Is this global warming? We got 10-15 inches of rain in about a week, which seriously messed up our soils structure and water content, while also carrying part of our soil away (see more pictures below).

Here are some pictures from the Stephanie and Micah's last day on the farm (a few weeks ago now.)

We had some great events last week, and as usual very delicious food. We even got in the newspaper - so check it out below. This Friday, NIcholas and Alice will lead a discussion on Anarchism and Cooperation.

Here's a short article about Practical Farmers of Iowa, with a picture of Nicholas as a young leader of a really cool farm.