Invitation for a permaculture design class at the Mustard Seed Community Farm, taught by Adam Campbell from the Peace and Permaculture University in northeast Missouri.

Permaculture is the practice of designing farming and living space to be in harmony with and benefit from the natural environment, of examining and using multiple functions of our plants, lands, and ecosystems, and caring for the earth and people in a rejuvenating human system.

The schedule for the class:
Saturday, July 26th, 9 to 5 PM
Sunday, July 27th: 11 to 4 PM

The class will be held at Mustard Seed Community Farm: 366 W Ave, Ames, Iowa, 50014. Mustard Seed is 10 miles north and 6 miles west of the town of Ames.

Also, there will be optional activities are available Saturday night and Sunday morning if you're camping or want to stay later or come earlier.

The class is offered following the gift economy: they are our gift
to the community and we hope that you will think they are so worthwhile
that you might give a gift to us as you are able - to help cover the costs
of the class, or to offer your time to the farm, or perhaps you will be
inspired by this class to go out and give a gift to the greater world.

Register for the class by contacting Alice McGary at (515) 460-1467 or mustardseedbee@gmail.com.
Camping is available on the farm.

Unfortunately, because of the coming thunderstorms, our seed saving workshop Sunday (today) will be cancelled. We will still be having the seed-saving workshop, on either August 16th or 17th, from 1 to 4 PM. We'll let you know further details soon.

Apologies!

Nicholas

June 28, 8 to 4 PM
Weed harvesting, green bean planting, and weeding

July 5, 1 to 5 PM
Garlic harvesting, processing, and eating, and probably some weeding.

July 19: 1 to 5 PM
Weeding, green potato digging, and raspberry eating.

August 9: 8 AM to noon
Weeding, cover crop planting, melon eating

Sep 20, 9 AM to noon
Sweet Potato Harvesting. We'll be harvesting most of our sweet potatoes. Workers can expect to take some freshly dug sweet potatoes home and learn a lot about digging!

October 4: 9 to 5

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.

The Mustard Seed Community Farm is offering 3 classes this summer (in addition to our every Friday potlucks).

3 Practical Classes for building a sustainable lifestyle. 3 Zany and incredibly knowledgeable visiting teachers.

June 14-15 Natural building weekend workshop

Sunday June 29, 15pm Seed-saving 1 day workshop

July 26-27 Permaculture design weekend workshop

May 8

in this newsletter: Potluck, Workdays, and Farm Update

POTLUCK

The last potluck of our winter season, as its almost summer, will be happening next Friday, May 16, with dinner at 6 PM and a discussion from 7 to 8 PM. This potluck will be in town (ames), at 704 Duff ave. The topic of the discussion shall be: Hindu philosophy and social justice. This will be led by the Hindu student organization at Iowa state. Come join us for good food and conversation. We'll also be coming out with our full summer schedule shortly, when we'll be having a potluck every week at the farm.

We will be offering 3 practical and fun classes on the farm this summer. We will be sending (and posting on our website) a more detailed description of the classes and the amazing teachers, but here are the basics so you can get them on your calendar.

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.