amy's blog

Dan here, writing the weekly column on the happenings at DR. Well, the season is really ramping up this week at Dancing Rabbit. I said yesterday that it seems like we've already had a month of summer and we haven't even celebrated May Day yet. Normally that's when the season seems to kick off. And it's not just because of the weather. Maybe it's because we already have work exchangers and have had so many events recently.

We are now standing on the verge of another visitor season, when things get really busy and the level of activity doubles at least. Yes, this is the time when groups of interested people come to spend time at DR, and we show them how things work and how we live so hopefully they will decide to come join us. To prepare ourselves mentally Coach Hot Dog (aka Nathan) led the Second Annual Visitor Season Pep Rally. He whipped us into shape and raised our DR spirit so that we would have the energy to give our visitors the warm welcome they deserve. He was backed up by our Dancing Rabbit Cheerleading Squad (probably didn't know we had one, did you?), which mostly consisted of Nani and Jennifer. Apparently there were several others at the cheerleading tryouts earlier in the week, but they chickened out at the last minute. Then the rally was wrapped up with an inspirational speech based on the Gettysburg Address by Thomas, who was channeling the ghost of the late great Babraham Lincoln. Don't ask. Needless to say, we were somewhat inspired and definitely entertained.

Hi all. This is Alline reporting the latest doings at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. As I write this the sun is shining, and everything is green, green, green! We knew it was truly spring when Tom shaved his beard, when Ziggy began watering the strawberries on his living roof, and when the robins started shouting, um, I mean singing, each morning at 5:00 a.m. 

With the lovely weather everyone who has ever even considered having a garden has been busy digging in the dirt. I’ve seen Adrienne making numerous trips with the wheelbarrow down to the Osage Garden, and watched Alyssa take a tray of seedlings out to the Sunflower garden for planting. Sharon and Dennis have been mulching and composting like crazy in preparation for the garden at the site of their new house, and Cob and Meadow keep planting berry bushes as they arrive. Tom and Tereza went away for a few days but first arranged to have someone look in on their seedlings (as any good parent would do). BJ and Nani continue to encourage their nine varieties of okra seedlings. I’m sure that any day now Ted and Sara will produce the first tomato of the season and we’ll all be consumed with tomato envy (OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but…). In other gardening news we were excited to hear that Dan has been approved for a grant from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service for a hoop house, which will enable him to extend the growing season on whatever fabulous things he decides to grow this year.

On Sunday we had a freakishly blustery storm which took part of the roof of Maikwe’s house and blew it into a tree. Fortunately about 25 Rabbits came to the rescue and put up a tarp, and everyone was OK. Whew!

Hi everyone. This is Alline with all the news that’s fit to print (and then some!) from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

On Wednesday Bob celebrated his birthday in the traditional Rutledge way with coffee and donuts at Zimmerman’s. We’re not sure exactly sure which one of the Rutledge Renegades started this custom, but we sure like it!

Amy and Juan’s son Jolyon also had a birthday this week. It was his first, and he had the parties to prove it! Joly’s grandparents came from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Minnesota and a great-grandmother, lovingly nicknamed “Chiquita,” came all the way from Argentina. Involved in the celebrations were three cakes, lunch at the Mercantile, several hundred balloons, and a time capsule for him to open in twenty years. The time capsule proved to be especially thought-provoking – what kind of technology will we have in twenty years, and what would be the most appropriate medium with which to communicate? Joly seemed just has content with a tea strainer as with his new wood train, puzzle and books, and charmed everyone with his sunny personality. He told me that he had a great time, and is looking forward to turning two.

So it was another smashing good week at Dancing Rabbit. The cloudy weather continued throughout the week keeping us in low power and restricted in our lifestyles. It seems like we went from bitter cold winter to now having a string of nights without freezing temperatures and with lots of rain. The weather has made this a poor maple sugaring year as the sap hasn't been running much. The mud pit that is DR in the spring deepened with the warm weather and made for difficult maneuvering within the village and out on the gravel roads. We had to have a load of rock dropped in front of the machine shed so we could park our vehicles without getting them stuck in mud. Some friends of Brian Toomey got stuck on the western section of Woehrle and when our 4WD truck was sent to the rescue it got stuck as well.

Hi friends! This is Alline writing this week for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

As the snow melts the mud appears, we try to maintain good attitudes as we glop about in the International Mud Headquarters. UPS and FedEx will no longer come down our road because it is so very muddy, rutted and not for the faint of heart. Fortunately Charlie, our USPS mail carrier, is made of sterner stuff – a little mud doesn’t faze him, and we find mail in our mailboxes each day. Thanks Charlie!

Not to worry about us though – we have our trusty 4WD truck, and we know how to use it. There is something very empowering about plowing through seemingly impassable mire. Perhaps we are once again proving that since we don’t have television we are very easy to entertain.

Nani, Elle and Jen have gone traipsing off to North Carolina ostensibly to bring Jeff home; however, I suspect that the lure of a warmer clime was also a motivator. We expect them back any day. Friends of the Carletons, Bonnie Marciante and her son Ben, arrived for a 10-day stay, and we are delighted to see them again. The result of Ben’s arrival has been a roving herd of boys running around the village (Duncan, Ben, Morgan, Enzio, and sometimes Morgan and Ewan) playing with obnoxious (to me) but beloved (to them) toys called Bionicals. Bionacals are apparently plastic Lego robotish things with names like Takanuva and Lesovikk. They have claws, wings, and (re)moveable parts. Wild stories and plots, alliances, attacks and triumphs seem to be part of the imaginative play. Clearly 52 year-old women are not the target audience; the boys, though, are captivated, and spend hours creating (and destroying) civilizations.

Ted here with this week's news from Dancing Rabbit.

My week began with an unexpected twist. Aurelia and I, headed back from a weekend wedding in Florida on our first trip together without Sara, made it as far as Quincy on the train from Chicago, only to find that the latest bout of falling snow meant our ride couldn't make it to ferry us home. Our truck, which might have made it, happened to be in the shop for a brake job. We stayed the night in a hotel, and I must confess I felt a sadness to be so close to home yet still stranded, particularly after having spent the previous day building sandcastles on a Gulf coast beach, but Aurelia stayed buoyant throughout, raising my spirits. We passed the hours reading book after book in the local library until Sara had raised some of our neighbors to plow the road so that a car could be sent for us. It was a short trip all in all, but I couldn't recall having been more glad to be home at last. Thanks to our friends with plows, and Sara for her rescue work!

The delay meant that I'd missed the final day of our retreat, which was sad, but most business was wrapped up satisfactorily, and each villager was soon back at his or her winter routine, sunlight slowly melting the accumulated snow cover and keeping spirits high.

Sara and I celebrate our birthdays back to back each February, and Sara celebrated hers in part by joining in on a workshop Tuesday afternoon on a Chinese medicine-based therapy called Tui-Na. This is one of the primary therapies Tamar has pursued in her healing process, and to which she attributes her excellent progress in healing from cancer. Tamar had invited a practitioner of Tui-Na from Fairfield, Iowa to come down and lead the workshop. All attendees I spoke found the workshop valuable, and I was glad to see our abilities to maintain health and wellness in the community growing deeper.

Aloha All, Nani from Dancing Rabbit. We have had a great week.

Fun and hard work were our themes at Dancing Rabbit this week. Many of us worked hard at having a ton o fun, while others had fun working hard at our annual retreat. Our second week of retreat meetings went very well. We accomplished a great deal of work in a relatively short period of time. We laughed, we cried (I believe there was some onion chopping at some point), and we reached consensus. Having more of our friends back home was a treat as it always is.  The saddest update is that the 15-foot snow creation from two weeks ago could not take the heat any longer - during one of our very productive meetings, our snow man (or woman) lost his/her head. The good news is that since the meltdown a double-sided snow being has arisen. Our new sculpture was double sided and very artistically done. And then…it snowed even more and where once there were faces on our snow person, there is fuzziness! The Yeti has come to town.

Nathan being home again has brought back more sledding in our lives. Our kids and big kids have been carving some serious sled snow at Vista De La Moo. Please pardon me if my snow lingo isn’t quite right, but they looked like they were having some serious fun up there. Speaking of fun, it’s been funny listening to stories about cars getting stuck on our crazy roads. It is only funny because everyone involved made out all right. I really enjoy hearing stories about how people get out of their fixes. Those that are able to drive despite the weather are like shiny heroes to me, it’s absolutely amazing to this warm weathered woman that they can get anywhere in the heavy snow. However, even my best and brightest heroes have had to push cars to the side and walk home. We have great friends and neighbors here though, as our roads have been plowed. Yay! Perhaps we'll go to Zimmerman’s cafe tomorrow?

Hi friends. This is Alline writing for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

This week can be summed up in two words: snow and retreat.

While the storm that hit the Northeast Missouri area was not nearly as dramatic as the one that Washington DC received, it felt pretty big to us. It snowed, and snowed, and then snowed some more. And then it STILL kept coming. While many Rabbits are tired of it (particularly the parents who, twice a day, have to drive the kids to the blacktop to catch the school bus) I remain completely, utterly besotted with snow. Perhaps it comes from growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where, if we wanted snow, we had to drive for four hours. Additionally, I am still slack-jawed at the beauty of each individual snowflake – as a child, carefully folding up paper and cutting “snowflakes,” I could not imagine that this was a fairly close approximation of what they really looked like. If you see me standing outside in a snowstorm staring at my arms and my hands, please remember that I have not gone ‘round the bend, I am merely appreciating snowflakes!

For the sake of our power systems and the batteries that store our electricity, I am glad to see sunshine and blue sky out my window today. The reflection of the sun off of the snow is especially powerful, and it is fun to watch the charge go up, up, up!

Hey Everyone! Dan D writing to give you your weekly update on the happenings at Dancing Rabbit. After many weeks without sunlight and the common house being on black power-meaning we were basically in a blackout- for about a week, we were happy to get a stretch of sunlight to recharge our batteries and recharge our enthusiasm for getting out of bed in the morning. We need winter activities to keep us going and though some of them are dependent on power, many are not. There is a lot of reading and planning for the season going on.

I've really been enjoying the garden club meetings we are having. It's been nice have a group of people to bounce ideas off and share gardening wisdom. It gets you thinking about spring, when the world is once again green and full of life. Many of our seed orders have already been placed and in the next few weeks some of us will be starting seeds indoors. The garden club is planning a couple of field trips for future meetings. We are planning a field trip to Sandhill's greenhouse to see what kinds of crops they are growing during the winter and what their plans are for it this spring. Also, one of these weeks Alyson from Red Earth Farms is going to show us a hands on demonstration of her use of round hay bales to sheet mulch a new garden area. And sometime soon I will be talking about seed saving basics so that gardeners can plan their seed saving efforts for this season. The idea for the club came from garden clubs that have been started in recent years in Britain to bring together “allotment” (called community gardens here) gardeners to share knowledge and build enthusiasm for gardening. Apparently with the economy in the state it's in, vegetable gardening is becoming much more popular as people try to grow more of their food themselves.

There are certain times of year when I find myself more aware of the differences between how and where I choose to live and the other choices I might have made. This week was one of them.

A week at a time of cloudy weather is not terribly uncommon here, particularly in winter, and our power systems are generally sized to make it through such stretches. But two weeks straight... well, when one relies on the lack of clouds for one's power, it begins to feel a little gratuitous.

Ted here at Dancing Rabbit with this week's update. Had the sun not shone unexpectedly for much of this afternoon, this might be a slightly darker (and more brief!) report, but despite the sun we still found ourselves eating dinner with our friends by candlelight this evening. (We generally update our daily power status first thing each morning, when one gets the truest reading of the state of charge in one's battery bank). Normally I enjoy dining by candlelight. But in this case, we've already been at it for most of a week, and have in fact burned through most of the supply of candles accumulated in the Community Building supply, so that we only had one candle per table of six to eight. Makes it a little harder to see your food!

This week at Dancing Rabbit we had weathery things like snow, ice, and slush. Burrrr and a bit o’ yuck. This is my first winter at Dancing Rabbit and it has been a learning experience (and continues to be). We had below zero weather for a few nights in a row. This weather, which I thought had to be uncharacteristic, is evidently how it used to be, "back in the day" (according to the Rutledge Renegades, locals and friends we talk to often at Zimmerman's). I have learned the fine art of chopping wood and keeping a room warm. Tereza, Alyson, and I all shared the joy of frozen pipes; not to fear, we are all well and on track again. The best part has been taking advantage of winter's abundance...of snow. Dave, Jennifer, and I trekked over to a big o hill, affectionately called Vista de la Moo, and sledded on toboggan and flimsy yet fast regular sleds. My first time sledding, it was awesome, I tried to get Thor (Bear's dog) to get on the sled, but he wasn't having it. What we also learned about too many nights of too cold weather may cause the top layer of potatoes to freeze. Sheila was trying to explain to me how the first mushy layer was usable in some way, but I couldn't really imagine it. The good news is that most of Sheila's cellared tates did well, and I'm hoping that one day Sheila will make me breakfast. Dan tried to feed his mushy taters to the chickens, they were not so interested; they are clearly hens with discerning and refined tastes. Whatever helps those yummy eggs to keep 'a coming!

Happy New Year to all of our readers! This is Alline checking in with all of the news that’s fit to print from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

As often happens around here, the big news is the weather. In a nutshell: it is COLD! It has been -9 and -11 (that is 9 and 11 degrees BELOW zero) in the mornings when we wake up…Brrrrr! People reading this in Northeastern Missouri are thinking “well, duh!” but this column also goes out electronically to all sorts of climates, and we’d like our friends in, say, Florida (hi to families of Liat, Mary Beth and Cecil!) to feel the full weight of our stoicism. Have I mentioned just how cold it is?

And still we bravely soldier on. As we run all of our appliances on renewable energy (solar panels and wind turbines) we choose not have clothes dryers – we have clothes lines. One of the most entertaining aspects of my winter is hanging clothes out to dry. Depending on just how bitterly cold it is, the clothes freeze solid within minutes – one can hold them up much like a board, which makes me laugh every time. (Clearly we do not have TV here, and are very easily entertained).

Just yesterday Nani, a native of tropical, sunny Hawaii, came by to borrow still more blankets. We are hoping that she survives the winter. The good news is that because it is so cold (at noon we are experiencing a daily high of 9 degrees F), the snow that fell on the ground over Christmas is still with us, and crunches delightfully as we walk around the village – it really is beautiful, at least to this Californian. There have been (brief but exciting) sledding runs down the hill across the road, exuberant games of broom ball and a group of Rabbits went over to Sandhill to play a game of ice hockey. I’m pleased to report that all came home with all of their teeth. The rest of us are staying home by the fire and reading seed catalogs, dreaming of warm sunshine and fresh tomatoes.

Hello! This is Danielle from Dancing Rabbit with praise for the changing of seasons, the quiet reflection of the winter months and a small brewing twinkle of next spring’s plans and schemes. I’m feeling rather poetic having just come from an early morning solstice celebration in Skyhouse, where we gathered this morning at 6:30 am for coffee, tea, cranberry orange muffins, corn muffins, Sheila’s sourdough pancakes and delicious eggs from our own Dan Durica’s lovely chickens (who are currently in the loving care of Dennis who it turns out makes the best scrambled eggs in the world). As the sun rose through the clouds and brightened a fresh cover of snow, we sat inside and sang old and new songs about the return of light in the sky. Last Night is when the celebration actually began; so let me back up a bit…

At dusk, we gathered with candles as Sharon treated us to a brief lesson on the meaning (scientific and spiritual) of the winter solstice. Scientifically, the solstice marks the moment in time when the earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun. In other words, when the sun reaches its lowest point in our horizon, thus beginning its ascent again, marking the last and longest night of the winter. For many people, this is a time to celebrate the change from darkness to light, the slipping away of the still winter and the sneaking in of an abundant, alive and promising spring. For us, it was a time to reflect on what darkness means for us, how we feel during the winter, what we experience and learn from the season of rest and stillness.

Dear Dancing Rabbit Friend,

It's finally making headlines! Everywhere you turn, a simple message is repeated: Don't Hurt the Earth!

Sounds like such a simple concept!

But you know it's not as simple as that. We all do. You may have heard about No Impact Man, who spent a year working towards zero environmental impact while living in New York City. He gets the media coverage he does because the truth is that aiming for zero impact is not simple. It's a radical departure from the current way of doing things. Our entire way of life has been built around convenience and ease for humans, with little regard to the ecological systems around us.

No Impact Man, village scale?

You know we're on the right path by looking at our track record: we receive support and encouragement from folks across the globe, including No Impact Man himself. No Impact Man writes:

“We need to change our culture so that living sustainably doesn't mean swimming upstream. Dancing Rabbit has created a village where living sustainably means going with the flow. We need more of that! Please support this community; it is making a big difference!”

Dan D. here, writing another column for our local paper updating you all on life in our village. I've been kind of busy this week getting ready for my annual winter vacation. It was the week when we felt the first real bitter cold front of the season. I picked the last heads of my broccoli and pulled the last of my carrots just before the temperatures plummeted. It's so nice to still be getting fresh garden produce in December. Hopefully, I'll be reporting the same thing in January and February when I'm pulling carrots, beets, and leeks from my root barrel.

I opened the door to the chicken coop the morning after it got down below zero and the chickens seemed struck by the world outside and turned right around again. The Ironweed coop seems to be working well to keep them at least somewhat warmer than the outdoors. They also benefited from the freezing of the broccoli plants. I threw the plants into their pen and they picked them clean of their leaves.

This last weekend the Milkweed's Mercantile hosted a showing of the documentary No Impact Man, about Colin Beavan, a guy in Manhattan who lived an eco-friendly lifestyle for a year. I think Alline talked about the movie last week so I won't give too much detail. Many rabbits and neighbors attended the showings and discussed the movie afterwards. It's been nice to see the lights on and activity in the Mercantile in the evenings. We hope to attend many more fun events there in the coming months and hope that our neighbors will feel welcome to attend.

Hi all. This is Alline with the latest news from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

Things here at Dancing Rabbit are pretty much the same – folks coming home from holiday travel, others leaving for trips. Gatherings, dinners, and our first snowfall of the year – yay!

But what has been on my mind most lately is movies. Last night we watched the documentary “Food, Inc.” It features two of my personal heroes; Michael Pollan, the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (http://www.michaelpollan.com/), and Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/). Among other things it focuses on the importance of small local farms, of being aware of where our food comes from, and just exactly what it in it.

I also previewed the documentary film “No-Impact Man” in preparation for this weekend’s free public screenings at the Milkweed Mercantile. I wasn’t sure what to expect – the film is billed as “Colin Beavan and his family turn their small Manhattan apartment into the site of an experiment in radical non-consumption.” They go off the grid for a full year—while still living in New York City—to see if it’s possible to make no net impact on the environment.

Zip zip zip goes the time, just flying by…where does it go?

It was Thanksgiving, now it’s December; who can keep up? I’m still trying to find a place to store the tomatoes I canned three months ago…

Hi all, this is Alline with this week’s adventures from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

It was a quiet but fun-filled week. Lots of folks are traveling for the holidays – Ted, Sara & Aurelia went east; Bear, Alyssa and Zane went west. Nani, Elle and Dave went south, then north; Brian went to Ohio, Liat was dog-sitting over at Red Earth Farms… And humans weren’t the only ones on the move – Dan and Mary Beth’s chickens took up residence in the “chicken TV” in the Ironweed kitchen.

We missed submitting a column last week – assigned author Jen had a painful run-in with lime plaster while working on Maikwe’s home. She accidently got a blob of it in her eye; as lime is extremely caustic it was very painful and rather terrifying, for all involved. Quick thinking on the jobsite got Jen’s eye flushed (and flushed and flushed) with saline solution, followed by a trip to the Memphis Emergency room where she received excellent care. After an uncomfortable and painful week, Jen is now doing well, as is her vision. Whew!

Dan D. here writing another column to update you all on what we were up to at Dancing Rabbit this week. It's been a stretch of unusually good weather lately. We got the October (or even September) we never actually got in October. I was able to finish the scratch coat of plaster on the house and make more progress on the light clay straw insulation on the South wall this past week.

I wasn't alone in getting some good work in during the late season warm front. Luke Zimmerman was doing more excavating the foundation for Bear and Alyssa's new house. The Ironweed kitchen has been transforming lately as Travis and Ted have been putting some finishing touches on it. I say finishing touches, but I guess the work adds up to a lot more than touches. The loft was finished so that Travis could sleep there during his stay. The greenhouse on the south side has been almost entirely enclosed. Boone put a door on the chicken coop and earthen floor was laid to prep the coop for the new tenants--my chickens. At our meeting today Ted talked of having a kitchen warming party soon.

Speaking of chickens, I was able to eat the first chicken from my flock this last week. I've got about 4 roosters and only 7 hens, so I plan to eat a couple more roosters before long. Mary Beth and I made delicious chicken soup in which the only ingredients not grown by us were salt and pepper. Then this morning I went out for the morning feeding and found my first egg. I brought it back home and fried it up right away. It was delicious, and the yolk had a deep orange color as only the freshest and healthiest eggs have.

Greetings from Dancing Rabbit!

It is awfully warm and balmy for November don’t you think? I suppose I am still adjusting to the whimsical nature of, well nature and weather and rain, and not rain etc. It is likely that by the time you read this we will all be huddled up indoors all cozy to avoid the bitter cold!

Hi! My name is Danielle and I am a new resident at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. I am originally from Northern California so you can imagine my surprise almost everyday when I wake up and greet the vastness of the horizon and sky not to mention the unpredictability of the weather. It has been so incredible becoming acquainted with the landscape and climate here. My partner, Boone, a Kansan, makes fun of me for being so utterly taken by all the different kinds of clouds. But I can’t help it, the sky has replaced the ocean for me and it is a never-ending source of awe. I do believe it is how I fell in love with this little corner of Northeastern Missouri. Since we (Boone and I) are fairly new residents, our time here at Dancing Rabbit so far has consisted of a lot of observing and absorbing. It is one thing to make the huge leap of faith it takes to move from a major metropolitan area to a rural environment with the intention of building a sustainable life for yourself, your family and your community, but to actually be here and experience the day- to -day reality of this experiment is humbling, beautiful and quite profound.

Hi all. This is Alline with the latest news from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

As this column appears in the local Northeastern newspapers and is sent to readers via email, we column writers do double-duty. The locals already know about the weather, but folks reading this in, say, Sarasota, Florida might not remember what a chilly, windy autumn day is like!

So with that caveat, we begin with the weather: The constant, driving, Noah-esque rain has finally abated and we’ve been receiving the wild winds for which the Midwest prairies are famous. Sometimes we wonder if we’re going to wake up in Illinois instead of here in Missouri. The leaves on the trees are all turning scrumptious shades of red, gold and brown, and are providing a gorgeous contrast to the bright green grass that still lingers. Fall crops are being harvested and eaten with gusto – chard and kale are still quite happy in the chilly fall air.

Halloween (or, as we call it around here: “Holler-ween”) is a big annual event here at Dancing Rabbit, rich in traditions which are being added upon each year. Preparation for the big day began early in the week with not one but two pumpkin carving parties. In addition, Bear crafted a jack-o-lantern with a skid-steer loader for Zane, a fan of all heavy equipment.

Saturday itself was filled with lots of planning and plotting for costumes and our annual Progressive Fiasco. Much like a progressive dinner, we dress up and go from home to home, where we are fed and entertained. In preparation for the stop his family was hosting, Cob came into the Milkweed Mercantile in the afternoon and asked for “a quarter pound of maggots.” In the spirit of the holiday, I filled his order with some delicious, organic jelly beans. Viewed in the right light, I guess they do look a bit larval…