Mustard Seed

The journey from Dubuque to Ames was the only ‘pain in the ass’ travel day of my current adventure. Though just a three hour drive from Dubuque, because of changes in bus operations during the pandemic it now requires a long disjointed route. First an hour south to Devenport where I had the pleasure of sitting at a gas station for a 3 hour layover before heading to Des Moines where a number of buses converge at 10:30 at night. After a couple hundred people shuffled between a half dozen different vehicles, I was finally on my last bus heading northward again to Ames getting in close to midnight. Mustard Seed founder Alice was kind enough to come grab me in the middle of the night.

The next day was an early morning at Mustard Seed, a “harvest day” where all hands are on deck to welcome in a dozen or so volunteers there to help collect produce from their fields. Everyone who comes leaves with a box of fresh picked veggies.
 

Volunteers start arriving at 7:00. Everyone circles up and takes turns giving their name and any specific crops they feel knowledgeable enough about to help harvest or even lead a team in working on.

As the newbie I was buddied up with an experienced person who could show me which tools and buckets/crates are appropriate for which veggies for the day and then the farm’s prefered method for harvesting various crops. On my first morning I helped with zucchini, garlic, cilantro, and the oh so thorny black raspberries.

The whole operation is documented on a large white board: how many folks worked on each veggie, when workers started each job, when they finished, the quantity and weight of each veggie harvested.

Each load of veggies was brought over to the outdoor kitchen, temporarily transformed for the day into the “pack house” where more experienced folks made sure they were washed and sorted into the correct number of boxes to be distributed. On the days I visited the boxes included: chard, kale, sweet peppers, egg plants, basil, garlic, onions, red or black raspberries, cucumber, zucchini, and currants. One morning also included farm grown bouquets of flowers for those who wanted one.

 

The produce wasn’t only destined for volunteer and Catholic Worker stomachs. Mustard Seed also shares boxes of food with poor folks and charitable organizations (including the Romero House Catholic Worker in town). Ames’s low income health clinic get some too, the thought being that when a doctor recommends folks eat healthier its that much easier to do if they can grab some fresh healthy food literally on site on their way out the door. The flowers also beautify the clinic space and offer something nice for folks to take with them. “The world will be saved by beauty” Dorothy Day liked to quote.

At the conclusion of the harvest morning everyone circles up again to share a rose (good thing that happened), a bud (a new thing that happened), and a thorn (a bad thing that happened) from their morning and then let the farm team know if there is any concerns or work that needs to be addressed regarding the vegetables they worked with that day.

After the harvest volunteers head out, the farm team and a hand full of more regular volunteers gather for snack time which doubles as a meeting where folks check in on how they're feeling, any personal needs they have that day, any more tasks they know need to get done around the farm, and what among the mentioned projects they’d like to work on the rest of the day.

Work recommences until noon when lunch is served followed by a couple more hours of work then dinner at five.

On non-harvest days the morning starts at 8 with a meeting similar to snack time and general farm work happens the rest of the day with lunch again at noon and dinner at 5. The work consisted of all the usual CW farm tasks: hoeing, weeding, mulching, trelassing, watering, seed gathering, seed planting, compost turning, pest controlling, etc.

Wednesday afternoons are a little different since they feature a class lead by Alice. The lesson caters generally to their flock of interns and some more regular volunteers but with an RSVP other folks are welcomed to join in. When I was in town it was an intro to permaculture but on other weeks it's focused on topics like food storage, wild edibles, seed saving, fiber arts, and food systems and food justice.

Thursdays and Sundays are off days while Saturday is a half day for folks who’ve put in their hours for the week. (There’s never truly a total day off on the farm. Even on the weekends chores need to happen, the chickens need to be fed and the deer fence needs to be electrified, etc.)

The farm itself is something like 10 acres and is in its 16th year. Some of those acres are in prairie, others growing some sort of cover crop to eventually be used as mulch and the rest are planted in produce. There are fruit trees of various ages all around and also 3 sheep who contribute wool and some chickens for eggs.

Cooking happens in the farm's outdoor kitchen. Meat isn’t common at meals, the fresh farm veggies as the star supplemented by things like lentils, rice, eggs, tortillas, and some preserved veggies. Folks take turns cooking the shared meals on a small camp stove and doing the dishes. Breakfast is up to each individual every morning.

Alice and Nate are the year around folks running the operation (they’re looking for more CWs if you're back to the land oriented!), but I came during a time when they had help from summer interns. This crew of college aged workers spend 30 hours each week working on the farm for a couple months. They’re essential for the farms well being during the peak work months of the summer. Most of them were associated with Grinnell College.

One different practice that Mustard seed had for their interns was set them up with a "host family" for the summer. Each intern was paired with a loyal long time volunteer who lived in town and if they wanted a real shower, to do laundry, or just get into town and away from the farm for the weekend they could do that. There seemed to be varying depth to these relationships with some interns becoming close to their hosts and others less so.

The shower infrastructure on the farm was simple. It consisted of a large black plastic tank suspended over 3 walls of a shower with a small hose running from it. Sunflowers and a curtain  made for privacy. A hose had to be run up to the tank to fill it with well water that was then heated over the course of the day by the sun shining on it. The laundry for its part featured a couple of buckets and a hand wringer.

The most exciting job, though not in a good way, was probably “beetle duty.” Every evening as the sun went down 2 folks went around with buckets of soapy water grabbing/knocking thousands of Japanese beetles into buckets. These invasive bugs would nonstop eat the grape, raspberry and other leaves if they were allowed to continue unabated. It was a sisyphean task going out night after night but it was the only hope for the fruit plants.