Not sure if we've mentioned the new people that are staying with us these summer months, but if not, here they are, in reverse chronological order:
Our most recent arrival is Noam, who got here a couple weeks ago, pictured here with potatoes we harvest this past Sunday: we finished digging up the Red Norland and also dug up all of our Yukon and some type of purple potato, in the chair next to Noam-the Red Norland and Yukon are on the ground.
Here is Lupe, a retriever-blue heeler mix, who was gotten as a puppy a couple months ago. Here he is on May 25th, in the foreground, while someone in the background mulches the potatoes that we just harvested so that the tubers wouldn't get exposed to the sun and turn green.
Lupe was adopted by our other two long-term guests, Looch and Emily. I ran out of potato pictures, so here's Looch waiting for a movie to start that we were projecting on the edge of our corn crib. The movie hasn't started so in the background of Luc's computer you can see a picture of Emily.
These workers have all been a great help, even though Lupe hasn't yet learned how to
Two things about gardens
1. There is now
2. This isn't directly related to our farm, but there will be an open tour of several of the community gardens the Saturday after this coming one: On August 6th, from 9:15 to 1PM. They won't be visiting our farm, but they will be seeing some other cool gardens, so if you're not busy on that Saturday, I think it'd be fun to check it out! See details in the flyer, below the jump!
ATTENTION: Midwest Catholic Worker Gathering, SUGAR CREEK 2011
September 16, 17, 18.
Dear all,
Soon it will be that wonderful time to gather together with friends old and new – Sugar Creek. Our small, humble, and sometimes disorganized team here at the Mustard Seed Community Farm CW will do our best to help this event happen, and we are grateful to know that our Catholic Worker friends will help it all come together beautifully.
Here’s the SCHEDULE we have tentatively assembled:
Arrive Friday afternoon and evening.
Everything is growing so well on the farm this year!
Last year we had so much rain, and so many trials and tribulations, and this year, it's been raining an inch a week and everything looks beautiful.
this friday's pot-luck is about spiritual gifts, and our leaders are Tom and Heather Brumm.
for those folks, mostly in my family, who want to know what our house looks like inside, here's one picture, from sometime this winter.
here are some photos of the superheroes from 2 weeks ago.
Tomorrow, July 1st, Nicholas Leete (me!) will be leading our discussion - dinner at 6, discussion from 7-8PM. I'm still working on what exactly it will be about, but the general theme will be agriculture's impact on on our water enviroment, in Iowa and around the world, and various measures that can or are being done to figure out some of the problems. I'll probably talk about my work with stream bank erosion. Maybe we'll talk about the DNR-IDALS power transfer, if someone comes who knows how that turned out, I haven't done the best job of following that whole thing. Maybe we'll talk about nitrate trading in New Zealand or stream buffers and the politics involving the promotion of different types of animal production. I'll have something prepared, though, and it should be a good discussion.
This Friday, Carl Kurtz will be talking about Natural Prairie. I couldn't find a picture of
Another experiment we're doing, this one sponsored by
This weekend we had two major things going on with our farm. First, as you might have read below, we had superheroes training here to go out into the world. You might read more about them from someone else later, or meet them off the internet and on the streets, but it was a fun training that some of us were able to join in, and the group was made up of lots of cool people we got to meet.
Also, this weekend, some of our farm team, some people from other farms, and some superheroes went to