Our summer potlucks have started, where together we explore issues related to agriculture, the environment, social justice, and spirituality. This Friday's (June 13th) will be led members of transition Ames, Carolyn Raffensperger and Nathan Thrailkill.

The rest of the potlucks, also on Friday, are below:

August 15: Transition from fossil fuel and resilience to climate change
August 22: Examining race and privilege, led by Mark Becker and Jason
August 29: Reestablishing tradition: praire restoration basics, led by Nate Kemperman
September 5: Exploring the co-existence of GMO's and organic agriculture, led by Bekka Brown

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.

Spring is being slow, and we are patiently delaying some of our plantings. Unlike some of our farming friends, we've not planted any new crops in the ground yet this season. However, we will be having our first "planting" workdays of the season this Saturday and next. April 5:1-5pm, and April 12: 9am-5pm with a break for a potlucky lunch.

Dear everyone,

Community Swap and Square DanceSaturday, March 1st, Mustard Seed, along with a few other Ames groups will be putting on a fun event at 130 South Sheldon. The schedule is:5 to 6 PM: Seed swap and giveaway. We've got a bunch of donated vegetable seeds, and know some people will be bringing their saved seed and plant materials. Come learn about saving seed and get seed to start a garden!