We're excited to offer a flower CSA this season! We love nourishing our community with healthy food, and offering flowers gives us another way to nurture and nourish: through beauty.

How does it work?

• Six bouquets are included: two in July, two in June, and two in August (approximately every other week)
• Cost is $150
• Specific dates TBD
• A central pick-up spot will be announced soon

Dear Mustard Seed friends,

Here's a roundup of spring news from the farm!

1. Save the Date: Saturday, April 1st 5-8 PM

Save The Date: Saturday, April 1 from 5-8 PM!

It's the return of our annual Spring FUN-raiser! Join us for an evening of food, friendship, and fun! Mustard Seed will provide soup and bread, and you can bring a side or dessert to share at our potluck meal if you would like. For entertainment, enjoy live music, dancing, bingo, and a craft sale!

Everyone is welcome! We will be taking a freewill offering and selling art/crafts to raise money for upgrades to our water system.

Hello everyone in the blogosphere! It's Nicholas, a former farm team member and also I'm analyzing some of the farm's data. Above is the harvest, in thousands of kg, from our farm for the last nine years. We don't have data from 2009 because we were busy starting the farm that year. Below, you can see about the same data, this time shown in the dollar value from our harvests, based on their wholesale prices. Stay tuned for more fun graphs!

Earlier this month, we got to hear The Leonas play at our farm. It was actually at the neighbors farm, because we didn't have a roof big enough for all the attendees and at the time there was still rain falling in Iowa. Community! The Leonas are a great band, check out their music here: https://leonasmusic.bandcamp.com/

We'll be having other events coming up soon, a potluck on July 9 and July 23.

What; Benefit Opportunity for Mustard Seed Farm

Where; Worldly Goods, downtown Ames store specializing in beautifully made, fairly traded items from around the world. See http://www.worldlygoods.org/

When; Wed. Nov 19th from 4-7 p.m.

Why; Share of all proceed from sales during this time to benefit Mustard Seed Farm

CIDER PRESSING -

Saturday Oct. 4th from 1-5. Bring as many apples as you want or can and we'll have a big pressing with our big old fashioned hand turned press and make cider you can bring home.

More details in coming weeks, but start locating some apple sources (lots of people have trees they would be happy to share if you pick em). THIS WON"T HAPPEN UNLESS YOU BRING YOUR OWN APPLES!!!!!!! We only have a few at the farm, and having to outsource our own.

Thanks, sure hope to see you, its been beautiful at the farm!

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