In this newsletter:
Season Update
Winter Potlucks
Workday reminder
Lost and Found Blanket from our music festival

read more

Season Update:
As Alice wrote in our newsletter just 10 days ago, we've now had at least 3 frosts. At the same time, since then, we've had some pretty warm days, this past week largely had highs around 80, and the forecast for the next week looks even better, with pretty warm nights as well. So we have things that are frost damaged, and growing slower because of the slow days, but there still seems to be a bit of vegetables around. We've been planting some cover crop among our peppers, as they're still alive. We might end up doing this in other areas if a frost doesn't kill off our peppers soon.

Winter Potlucks:
We've got our schedule for the first half of our winter season done. The potlucks will be in Ames, the second Friday of every month until May. Dinner will be at 6, discussion at 7. The first one will be next Friday, October 14th:

Oct 14, 6-8PM Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker At Larrison and Brian's house: 138 Main Street, Ames, IA 50010.
Alice McGary will be returned from the national Catholic Worker gathering tonight and several of us have just gone to the midwest Catholic Worker gathering. Alice will help facilitate a discussion about the Catholic worker movement and its goals, using the Aims and Means as a starting point.

Nov 11 The Bahai Faith Unfortunately I don't know the time for this, we'll send out another email at the beginning of November
hosted and led by Hannah and Leif, they'll talk about the basics of the Bah'ai faith, and what people can learn from it

Dec 9 Food Aid and Food Justice
hosted and led by Shari, we'll talk about food aid and world food issues as part of a more general discussion concerning the issues of service and justice.

Jan 13 Technology
At the Bleidel's house, we'll talking about technology, likely in the context of appropriate technology, technology and society, or technology and the environment.

Workdays
As noted in the last email, we'll be having two more big workdays this year. This first starts in about eight hours, the other will be this Friday, the day of our first potluck!
This Saturday (Oct 8, from 9AM-4PM)
We'll be protecting our trees for the winter from rabbits and deer, so that we can have a good crop of fruit and maybe nut next year. We'll also be taking down our fence, cleaning up some plants, and planting cover crops, such as the radish planted among the eggplant in the picture above. Depending on the weather, there will likely be some crops to harvest as well. Come for a few hours or all day. If you're coming all day, you should bring your own lunch, as our fall kitchen sometimes doesn't get enough sun to cook lunch for a large group.

The Friday after that (Oct 14, 9AM-4PM)
This August, we harvested garlic that we had planted last October. It was a great crop, and now it's time to plant next year's crop. This will give it a chance to grow throughout the fall and early spring. We'll be preparing beds and planting cloves from this year's harvest. We also will likely be doing some of the farm tasks that didn't get done on the previous workday, and again, might be harvesting if there's still harvest to be had. Again, if you're coming all day, bring your lunch.

Blanket found

At our music festival this August, someone left a blanket. I believe it was grey and green. If you'd like to get it back, let us know, and we'll work on getting it to you.