Greetings gentle readers, this is Cob reporting on the latest and greatest happenings from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage and our little houses on the prairie.  For those of you outside of northeastern Missouri, the unseasonably warm spring has given way to cooler temperatures and welcome rain, rejuvenating all the weeds and grasses that seek to take over our gardens or any other bare patch of ground.  I know that my transplants and direct-sown vegetables are in there somewhere, but I sometimes have trouble finding them.  I often wonder why we go to the trouble of growing such fussy plants, when weeds are so abundant…and then I taste that first fruit, plateful of steamed chard, or fresh asparagus spear…and it all becomes worthwhile.

The same has sometimes been said regarding our visitor program…sharing our home with so many folks is fulfilling in its own way, but it does take a lot of time and effort each season.  Yet each visitor group brings its own reward too.  Avery, Dee, and Hassan have stayed on after their visitor session and have joined the ranks of work exchangers for the season, and possibly even beyond as they consider Dancing Rabbit as a potential place to make their new home.  Others have teased us with their passion for sustainability and wide range of skills, and left with promises of returning sometime soon.  A whole new crop of visitors is scheduled to arrive next week, and a quick read through their application letters is enough to keep the excitement building.

Visitors and work exchangers aren’t the only newcomers.  This week also saw the arrival of Dancing Rabbit’s first sheep, plus a number of additional chickens and rabbits (of the domesticated variety) as well as a very large deep freeze where at least some of them will be residing later this year.  For those not excited about local, organic, and humanely raised meat, Dancing Rabbit also received the first call to come pick excess fruit.  The warm spring certainly made the fruit trees happy, and sweet cherries were ready for picking a solid month ahead of schedule, and I’m snacking on them right now.  Most everything appears to have come through a late frost intact, and if hail or drought don’t get in the way it should be an abundant year.  If you are in the area, and have an excess, please consider giving us a call.  Usually some group of rabbits will be happy to come and put that abundance to use…dehydrating, canning, or otherwise preserving it for the winter months (and to share it by way of repayment).

The return of visitors and work exchangers had also enables a resurgence in building activity.  Several additional bents have been raised at Sharon & Dennis’ home site, several foundations are in place waiting for framing, exterior siding has continued at my own house (and may even be done this week, hip hip hooray), and others have worked on sourcing materials and preparing them for use this year.  The entire community has also been involved in clearing the way for additional road work, extending the main road out to the new community building site and through another neighborhood, and beginning some reworking of Dancing Rabbit’s public entrance and providing a better storage area for our trailers and relocating a couple small grain bins.  Yup.  Just can’t get enough of moving heaving things from one place to another.  New resident Ben is so enthusiastic in fact, that he has taken on local milk delivery twice-weekly by bicycle.

On a slightly larger scale, our thanks to Clayton Kline and others for hauling many loads of rock for the new roadway, and to the many rabbits who turned out to put down groundcloth in the roadbed and drainage conduit in the ditches after Zimmerman’s Excavating had cleared the topsoil.  Much of the design work on the new community building has been done, and we are moving on to the phase of determining which jobs we need to create and hire for first…among these is a job we’re calling the Materials Czar, who will be responsible for researching and sourcing every single item that goes into the new building to ensure that we will meet LEED Platinum and the Living Building Challenge criteria for certification of the completed structure.  Having the new roadway in place prior to beginning physical work on the site will help the project go more smoothly, and hopefully we won’t have to work around the weather quite so much.

I think that most anywhere else, this would be more than enough to occupy everyone’s time and energy, but this is Dancing Rabbit so there’s even more.  Rachel’s new building La Casa de Cultura (the Casa for short) has been getting a workout.  In addition to daily yoga and meditation, the Casa hosted another weekend of dance instruction with Gunter & Cora, who will joyfully teach just about any dance style you can think of.  The scheduled offerings included waltz, tango, salsa, and general instruction for improving dance partner communication (an absolute necessity for double left-footers like myself) along with plenty of time for open dancing.  Balancing social fun with business fun, we are also preparing for another of our bi-annual facilitation trainings, wherein we supply a number of business topics to discuss for both our benefit and that of the trainees.  This means a number of significant proposals to read through and ponder in advance of those meetings.  For me, one of the most exciting proposals on tap is the possible addition of a fully electric car to the vehicle co-op.  At 60+ users, the addition of a third passenger car of any sort to our fleet would be useful…but an electric car that we can charge with power generated on-site is simply fantastic!  With a range sufficient to handle several trips to Memphis and Rutledge on a single charge, this will make scheduling other vehicles for those longer trips to LaPlata, Quincy, or Ottumwa (usually for the train) much easier.

What we do in the course of our daily lives takes a lot of personal effort.  Tending to family & gardens, income work, building-the-village work, and even squeezing in some personal fun-time can often feel overwhelming and challenging.  Yet it has its rewards, which are often most apparent in the small things.  Walking through a village where I had a hand in raising that wall, weeding that garden, or filling that woodshed. Singing with fellow rabbits one night, listening to their personal fears another, solving a problem in committee the next day, feeling a connection with each and every one of my fellow rabbits. Ahh…life is indeed full of cherries.  Please excuse me while I go refill my bowl.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer free tours to the public twice monthly from April-October. Our next public tour will be May 26 at 1pm. Meanwhile, for more information you can visit our website www.dancingrabbit.org,  or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

Greetings! Tereza here, with all the doings at Dancing Rabbit, or at least all the doings I know about…

Seems like it was a super busy week, so in an attempt to not forget anything important, I’ve decided to go backwards in time. Our first visitor session of the season ended Monday, but since three visitors have decided to make the transformation into work exchangers and/or residents, we didn’t have to say goodbye to too many awesome people. I’ve really enjoyed this batch of visitors, and am looking forward to getting to know the ones who are staying even better in the weeks to come.

Sunday was a mellow day to top off the busy week, with only our regular weekly meeting, a fun music jam at Bluestem, and a movie plus discussion at the Mercantile in the evening. Saturday, on the other hand, had a lot going on. There was a big impromptu garden work party in the morning that I didn’t manage to see, but it sure sounded like they were having a lot of fun!

After that we got as many of us together as could make it and took a group photo as part of 350.org’s Connect the Dots campaign, an international climate change awareness project. There were serious poses and silly poses for the camera, and all in all it was a brief but enjoyable interlude. For me it’s always impressive to notice how much bigger our group pictures have gotten through the years!

Saturday also marked another fabulous May Day celebration at Sandhill Farm. Lots of Rabbits biked, walked or carpooled over to spend time sharing food and drink, contra dance with live music, a maypole dance, and much socializing with friends and neighbors. There was also frisbee, face painting, chanting (and sweating) in the sweatlodge, singing, music playing, and the eternal favorite of kids young and old, swimming in the pond.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Saturday was also Clint’s birthday. It’s only a rumor, but I heard he attended the garden work party in the morning to celebrate.

Friday and Thursday we had several hours of meetings, with the help of an outside facilitator, to discuss power dynamics at DR. We try to be proactive in addressing hard issues and potential conflicts, and this topic has come round a few times in my 12 years here. People naturally have varying levels of power in any community, and that power can be based on many things. It can come from being a founder, having a charismatic personality, being outgoing and articulate, possessing skills that the community needs and values highly, or even just being around long enough that you know how things work here, and how to present your issues and ideas in group process effectively.

Problems can creep in if some community members start to feel like the folks they view as having more power aren’t respectful of them or their opinions. Since we pride ourselves on openness, fairness and equal opportunity, it can be hard to talk about these kinds of feelings, and hard to hear that others are having them, which is why we went with an outside facilitator– so that everyone could focus on what was going on for them in the meetings.

So we spent several hours over the two days getting into the nitty gritty of power dynamics at DR, and while we aren’t perfect and things felt hard much of the time, it was amazing to watch people for the most part being open, saying hard things, listening well, and being compassionate with each other. It was intense, and a lot of issues were touched on that we’ll need to wrestle with some more, but I for one think we made a good start and am proud of us for tackling such a tough topic and being committed to looking at this stuff.

Wednesday was Bri’s birthday (Happy birthday, Bri!) and our usual weekly song circle. Tuesday was tri-community potluck, with a short story reading afterwards, and in the morning our Red Earth neighbor Alyson gave a workshop on basic consensus for long and short term folks alike. I always learn a lot when I attend these trainings. We try to have them at least once a year, so new folks get some formal training in the process we use to make decisions.

Last Monday feels like a very long time ago, but as I recall there was both parts singing and sewing circle in the evening. As for what else happened this week, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume there was a fair bit of gardening and building, meetings (of course), not to mention parenting, cooking, trying to get laundry done around the rain, socializing, and all the other things we do that make our lives here rich and full.

As for me, I’ve really been enjoying having more home grown produce again– I’ve been eating radishes, thinnings from the greens patch in the garden, pea shoots, and walking onions, not to mention Dan’s fabulous greens and salad mix. Mmmmm! Wishing all of you good food, good friends, and good times as well.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer free tours at 1:00 pm on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, April through October. For more information visit our website, www.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

Ah, the confusion of spring weather! It seemed so clear in March that we were headed for an early, steady spring; but of course spring around here typically includes all sorts of weather swings, and up through this past week, the threat of a last frost lingered. We waited and waited to fill in the gaps in the brassica beds where earlier transplants had succumbed to the hard frosts of a few weeks ago… and now we’re in our standard last frost range and we’re looking toward a projected high of 90 later this week! As abrupt as the swing feels, by the calendar of past seasons we’re in about the right spot, and our tomato seedlings in paper pots are going to be very happy to start hardening off for the garden in the warm weather this week. Time to get the sweet corn and beans in the ground.

Ted here at Dancing Rabbit to offer you this week’s update.

Construction progress on our house this week included getting the first of the raw wool insulation for our addition’s ceiling installed. Four or five years ago a local sheep farmer offered to sell her fleeces for the cost of shearing, around $5 a head, and I readily jumped at the opportunity despite not having an immediate project to make use of the resource. Last weekend’s semi-annual land clean uncovered the large burlap-bagged bales of wool, almost lost but not forgotten, in the machine shed. The time had come to claim them: our project was ready! Some had ended up in ground contact with some of the burlap rotted away, but aside from some superficially rotted edges, the raw wool was moist but in good shape. Early in the week my crew and I moisturized our hands with all the lanolin as we spread the fleeces on large black tarps in the sun, fluffing and turning them every hour or two to allow the sun to dry them out. Now they’ll spend fifty or a hundred years or more keeping the temperature in our house right about where we want it.

Speaking of sheep, Dancing Rabbit welcomed its first livestock larger than chickens this week when Kyle brought home four full-fleeced ewes from a nearby farm. The morning rapidly developed from an excited neighborly welcoming into a minor rodeo. The ewes, understandably skittish from their transportation experience, all went along with the plan for a while, being walked on halters from the van toward their new fenced paddock. But with equally skittish dogs around, one finally jerked itself loose from its human lead en route, and in fear and confusion went a long way off on its own before it was caught again.

As you may know, sheep are most comfortable in a herd, and the lone ewe, back on tether but without fleecy friends, refused to go more than a few steps back across the fields toward her very distant companions. Weighing in around 200 pounds, and with four feet to hold her ground, she was not easily influenced. There seemed little option but to bring the truck out to the field, at which point four of us picked her up into the bed and ferried her more successfully back to the fenced enclosure to rejoin her compatriots.

The four are now settling into Ironweed’s orchard while awaiting group agreement to let them graze in the shared orchard near the entrance to Dancing Rabbit. I’m excited for the future, which I hope will bring more grazers before long! As a budding cheese maker, visions of goat and sheep cheeses aging in our root cellar seem to be floating constantly through my head now…

This weekend’s contra dance event Contra Culture brought in dancers from near and far and kept the dance floor in La Casa jumping at intervals through the weekend. While I’m not very comfortable with the gender and power dynamics in swing and other partnered social dance genres (namely, the expectation to lead smoothly), I fell in love with contra while living in Maine. Every dance is taught, so once you know the basics, the learning curve is a forgiving one. One piece that pushes our cultural standards is the contra norm of staring your partner or neighbor in the eye as you swing or turn with them, the purpose of which is to keep you from getting dizzy. The unity of everyone in the room dancing in unison, and continually progressing up and down the hall, dancing with new couples each round, is strongly reminiscent of the joy of living in community. The live fiddling and guitar (and the occasional upright bass) sweep me right off my feet.

This weekend’s event took the dance one step further with an emphasis on de-gendering the dancing roles. In place of the default assumption of men as leads and women as follows, each participant could self-select which role they wanted to dance, with leads donning an armband to signify their choice. Having danced mostly lead in contra prior to this weekend, I quickly found the wisdom in the callers’ recommendation to stick with whichever role you chose for the duration of a three-hour dance event. Switching mid-stream, as I eventually did, was extremely confusing!

I was a proud papa, watching my five-year-old Aurelia loving the dance all weekend, finding her own partners, and participating capably. She and new friend Lucy, three years of age and visiting for the weekend with her dad, partnered with each other for one square and made it through with some adept shadowing of the younger by one of the experienced dancers here for the weekend. Cheers to all participants for their inclusion.

Holding the dance weekend at Dancing Rabbit meant that we got to share some of what we do here during some workshops with participants. In addition to getting our groove on to the excellent live music, Sara and I each lead a short workshop in gardening and earthen plaster, respectively. The plasterers were ready to get dirty, and dove into stomping sand, mud and straw into a batch of plaster and then learning to apply it on our addition’s walls. We hope we’ll see lots of the weekend’s guests return for future events.

In other events, Morgan and new residency applicant Elea headed to the Prom at our local high school Saturday. Elea spent several hours with her team of stylists and fashion consultants preparing for the event in Mandy and Ryan’s new tent house down our way. She emerged radiant and the two headed off to the event in full form. Somehow Aurelia managed to come home with painted fingers and toes… no surprise there; she’s on a three-month bender of wearing almost nothing but fancy dresses. We don’t emphasize boy-girl cultural norms here with our kids, wanting to let them learn for themselves what feels comfortable; but some of these things seem to be built-in, as far as I can tell.

Ultimate Frisbee players finally got back on the field Thursday with enough players for a great short game. Several of our regulars have been out of town, so we’re itching to get into a steady schedule again. Sadly, it looks like we won’t be headed back to the Show-Me State Games tourney this summer owing to scheduling conflicts, but with our fab new full-size field to play on now, we’ll be ready to show our stuff again next year.

This second week of our first 2012 visitor session brought a number of new residency requests. The membership committee interviewed a lovely family of three from Chicago this week, recommending them to the group for residency beginning in June, and will interview two more this week and a third next. Despite membership having grown from 10 or so when I first came to Dancing Rabbit in 2001, to 62 and growing now, every new residency request still feels like an unexpected windfall. The larger we grow, the more ideas we convert from concept to reality. Nine years on now from taking the plunge myself, I remain proud of what we’re doing and excited to see and do ever more.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is a growing village whose mission is to experiment in, and demonstrate, ecologically sustainable living. Our twice-monthly tours, 2nd and 4th Saturdays at 1p through October, are free and open to the public. The next will be Saturday, May 12. For more information, please check out our newly updated website at www.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

On a sunny day, in the early evening, just after dinner time, excitement is heard in the yards, paths and streets. Excited faces, hands clutching dollar bills, running feet, and lively laughter and chatter called to mind a scene from my suburban childhood. All that was missing, really, were the tinny strains of “Tarantella” growing louder and louder as the ice cream truck drew near. It was Dancing Rabbit’s first visit from “The Plant Man.” (That’s our nickname, not his, it goes along with “The Bucket Man”, “The Mail Lady”, “The Beer Guy”, “The One-Cow Dairy”, etc.) Mark Slaughter of Sunrise Farm in Kirksville brought us a pickup truck full of heirloom, organically grown vegetable and herb plants for sale. There was a collective gasp of admiration as we started unloading the plants for shopping; they were gorgeous.

Hello there, it’s Sam this week, bringing you the news from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

Mark’s plants are not the only new growth taking root this week. A few of us have gotten seedlings from Missouri Wildflowers to bring some native blooms to attract and nourish wild creatures and beautify the village. Bri’s working on a native plant rain garden for the courtyard. The vegetable gardeners have been putting out seedlings, too, for a while now.

There’re also different kinds of roots and attachments forming with our first visitor session of the year. We have twelve folks flirting–with various levels of commitment–with the idea of moving to and becoming residents then members of Dancing Rabbit. Four of them have already spoken with the Membership and Residency Committee about starting the residency process, and will have interviews soon. One wexer, who was here in 2009 and has come back to work exchange again this year, is also applying for residency.

With all these people, it’s a good thing were’s making some progress on our future decision-making system. Fifty people is starting to feel like too many to have in one room and there is a general sentiment of fatigue with whole-group decision-making, so we’ve decided to change how we do things to take some of the strain off ourselves. We want to stay within the spirit of consensus, so we’re inventing a new way to apply those ideas to a larger group. It’s an exciting, pioneering thing to be a part of. I’ll keep you posted as we talk, then apply, then discover things we need to change about our new system.

We had one of our two annual land clean days on Saturday, during which folks pitched in to do beautification projects and generally tidy up around the village. My favorite improvement is the tidiness of the area around the bench by the road where I sit to wait for the school bus in the afternoons to greet the kids as they come home.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational
nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable
living. We offer free tours to the public the second and fourth Saturday at 1pm from
April-October. For more information you can visit our website at www.dancingrabbit.org, “like” us on Facebook or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

DR’s newest member, Julie, here with this week’s column. As I live my life, I often find that there are themes and lessons that are undeniably pronounced when I have the energy to think creatively about how interestingly life unfolds. For this week’s themes, I feel that both cycles and balance have been recurrent in my thoughts. We are but a few days away from our first visitor session of the season. Now that I have been here living at DR for a full year, experiencing the seasonal shift of swinging from a quiet and private fall and winter to opening our homes and lives to folks interested in living sustainably over the next 6 months is coming full circle. Our visitor sessions are a great way to inspire other people to take home the message of living more lightly upon the earth, and to recruit new members. At the same time, they remind us that we are doing something innovative and special, and I am looking forward to having my perspective renewed through the eyes of people seeing how we live for the first time. I am already enjoying the new residents and work exchangers who have brought along musical and artistic talents, as well as an obvious joy to be living here with us, even if they depart after a short stay.

Spring is typically a demanding time of year, brimming with irresistible urges to commence construction and gardening projects. Clay tamping for an entryway to Ted and Sara’s was dovetailed into a social pit-stop, and some felt inspired to offer a hand while chatting away. That particular experience was the perfect illustration of the marriage between work and play, and I hope to carry that ideal into my life in a more observable way. Designing a metaphorical time management plan where the limbs of work and social/fun time are fairly balanced has been somewhat of a challenge for me. Knowing when to stop building the fenced garden and raised beds, and when to create leisure time isn’t as easy as it may sound when you don’t have a clock to punch, or have specified hours of labor assigned to you. I’ve been so diligently plugging away at my projects that only when I stopped, did I realize how hard all of my fellow community mates were working right alongside me. I feel that I have caught “Spring Fever”, and have been so enlivened by the luxury of fair weather to pursue projects in, that I had almost forgotten to engage in all of the other lovely activities that accompany this time of year. Walking on the land has always been a favorite on-farm endeavor that I indulged in, and (successfully) hunting for morels was a true joy this past week. My suspicion of beginners luck was soon replaced by the title “Mushroom Master Extraordinaire” as my partner Dan and I gathered what he deemed was the most impressive collection of morels he has ever procured in his 5 seasons of gathering. This discovery of a new love brought me back to myself, as it’s easy to get lost in the melee of Spring. Rumor has it that multiple groups have gone out and found upwards of 30 mushrooms, but as to the locations of those treasures, well, we consider that to be a highly guarded secret.

Attempting to lead a life that is guided with the goal of sustainability can be anything but easy when faced with the obstacle of changing weather patterns. Unforgiving weather has had us scrambling to protect our gardens this week from the frost’s looming potential for destroying a portion of our livelihood. Spring that came a month early has left tender unfurled foliage vulnerable and in need of earnest attention in the face of such a threat. Row cover was in short supply as we devised creative ways to insulate plants with mountains of straw in the hopes that it was heaped heavily enough as to prevent the wind from whisking it away. We are hoping that this imbalance is a fluke, and that future gardening seasons will debut with the graciousness we have come to rely upon for our sustenance. If these anomalies become a seasonal pattern, we will surely need to develop new ways of protecting our trees and perennials in our pursuit to synchronize our actions as a careful and calculated response to our environment.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer free tours to the public twice monthly from April-October. Our next tour of the year will be April 28th at 1pm. Meanwhile, for more information you can visit our website www.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

If you have lived, worked, played or stayed at Dancing Rabbit before for any length of time, please save the date for our 15th Land Day Reunion!

We’ll be celebrating 15 years of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage history with storytelling, music, dance, food, fun, and reconnection with Rabbits new and old.

Join us October 5-7, 2012 as we enjoy potlucks, photos, dance parties, campfires, talent (or no-talent) shows, and much more, including burning the last two of our original mortgages!

Our 10th Land Day Reunion in 2007 was a smash, with over 100 people attending, and we hope to have even more people show up this year. Bring your significant others and family to this weekend of community and help us celebrate sustainable living.

To get all the details and updates you should make sure you are on our mailing list.

You can also join our event on Facebook.

Details to follow in the upcoming months. We hope to see you there!

After an early summer, it is with a mixture of regret and relief that I’m settling back into spring.  Cob here with the weekly update about what’s been going on at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.  The cooler weather has been a relief for the early spring plantings of brassicas, peas, early lettuces, and other plants which don’t fair so well in baking heat.  Presumably there will be enough of that in the coming months to keep us supplied in eggplant and peppers.  The biggest adjustment for me personally has been to remember that the pond got COLD again!

The beautiful weather provided plenty of opportunity to work outdoors pruning trees, turning over garden beds, clearing weeds, hauling bales of straw for mulch, and otherwise providing a solid stream of business for anyone willing to offer massage.  Usually I don’t feel this busy (and sore) until there are a lot more people on farm for the summer…and while some new work exchangers (wexers for short) have arrived, many rabbits were traveling for the holidays and our overall numbers still feel small and intimate.  This provided a nice atmosphere for a few celebrations this past week.  One of the clear favorites was a combination egg-dyeing led by Nani, and hair-styling/dyeing salon led by Elea. 

On Saturday we held a condensed-version Jewish Seder (the feast of the Passover) with a great family-style potluck meal and Old Testament storytelling.  This was followed by a glorious Easter morning egg-hunt organized for all the youngsters in the tri-communities by Dave’s mother Cindy (who is here visiting and getting some solid grandma time with the new baby).  Those of us preparing the Common House for our weekly scheduling meeting enjoyed listening to classical sacred music for the holiday courtesy of my ipod streaming the broadcast from my old hometown public radio station WXXI.org in Rochester NY.  Ostrichtron also made co’s annual appearance at the conclusion of the Easter-egg hunt, offering adults and children alike a fresh new orange in exchange for a pebble or rock.  As Ostrichtron’s shrouded figure faded into the distance one of the children whispered in awe, “who was that?!”…and the legend continues.

As you may have read in prior news, there is a possibility that Dancing Rabbit will be the location for a reality-TV show.  This has certainly caused no small amount of excitement and trepidation on our parts, and I can’t help but keep imagining a film crew watching me all the time as I’ve gone through my normal daily and weekly routines.  The wariness of unintentional consequences (usually in relation to thinking about the shows that seem to be popular on TV these days) and the excitement of sharing our vision for sustainability and the very real power of community has generally faded to be replaced by bewilderment.  Why would anyone want to sit and watch?  Watching the train-wreck of people shouting their frustrations as each other might be mildly interesting, but watching people talk about their feelings and find ways to reach agreement?  Sure this is valuable from a social or educational standpoint, but entertainment?  Really?  People would watch that?

Having reached this stage of detachment about having a camera crew underfoot, it’s been much easier to become distracted by the plans and anticipated progress of the next few weeks, which include things like an annual spring land clean, a work party for clearing invasive garlic mustard plants, our first official public tour of the season, our first three-week visitor session for 2012, new road work providing wet-weather access to the new common house construction site and Crooked Route neighborhood, and a flood of new wexers for the season! 

Meanwhile, a few more days of relative quiet to spend working on de-nailing boards to be used for siding on our (increasingly complete) house, one more day to enjoy the kids home on spring break (see “de-nailing” above), and wonder what this year will ultimately be remembered for in Dancing Rabbit lore.  2011 was definitely the year of the woodshed, as many dwellings were lacking one until recently…ah the irony of a mild/dry winter!  So far 2012 is shaping up as the year of the clothesline…five solid large-capacity clotheslines have been constructed this spring already.  Is this really newsworthy?  Maybe not.  Cause for intense personal satisfaction and improved quality of life?  Definitely. 

Do new clothes lines make for gripping TV viewing?  We’ll all find out soon enough I suppose.  What would change for you if you were displayed on national television?  What wouldn’t change?  What would you think about differently, and why?  What would you do more of or at least do with a stronger sense of purpose and conviction?  If you happen to ponder these questions this week, I’d be interested in your responses.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, practicing sustainable living among 50+ members. There’s lots to see, so start thinking about a spring tour now! We offer them the second and fourth Saturday each month for much of the year.  The first tour in 2012 is April 14th at 1:00pm…no reservations are necessary. For more information, please see our website at www.dancingrabbit.org, visit our blog The March Hare at blog.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

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

As always, it feels next to impossible to encapsulate a week in the life at DR in a few short columns. However, I am your dedicated reporter and, like the Girl Scout I once was, vow to do my best.

The big news, which really isn’t news at all, is the weather. The old axiom “everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it” doesn’t hold true here. I’ve never been in a more weather-aware environment than Dancing Rabbit, where everything from our electricity and our food sources to our entertainment is weather-dependent. When the sun peeks out we all get excited, run outside and dig in our gardens. When the temperature hits the near 90’s, as it did yesterday, well, we all head out to the pond for a swim. April schmapril – it feels like summer!

In other news, the annual immigration of Work Exchangers has begun. More details next week on the individuals who are joining us for awhile to learn about and participate in organic gardening and construction, embracing many aspects of traditional, conventional and alternative techniques. We’re excited to meet the new cast of characters who will undoubtedly enliven our work scenes and entertain us for the next few months!

As Tereza alluded to last week, a television production company’s development director and his casting guru spent a very busy day interviewing and hanging out with many members and residents of Dancing Rabbit, and generally getting a feel for what life is like here in our little community. They were here to see if they could perhaps craft a 13- (or even 26-) episode season of our lives.

I think it is fair to say that Rabbits are, in general, excited about the concept of some sort of television coverage of life here at the ecovillage. The 30-Days episode, made back in 2005, continues to air periodically and still generates lots of interest. (Information on that show can be found here and answers to questions about it can be found here ). While parts of the episode were extremely contrived, on a whole the Spurlock team did a good job of presenting our Ecological Covenants and being respectful about our lives here in our little village.

However, we are not believers that “any publicity is good publicity.” After our 30-Days experience we came to understand that the reality portion of “Reality TV” is to be taken with a very large grain of salt. And quite frankly, our means of communication, which strives to be thoughtful and non-violent (in the form of Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication), might not make for good entertainment. There is very little screaming, yelling or dish-throwing here. In fact, the only dish-throwing I’ve seen in my 12 years here is when builders deliberately smash ceramic plates and cups and bowls, in order to use the pieces in mosaics…but I digress.

On the other hand, Dave-the-Development-Director told us that he would like to make “a TV series where we would make people think “hmmmmm…what would my life be like as a Rabbit?” He also acknowledged that “…unlike to the two stereotypical city people in the 30 Days episode, (viewers) would be people who are generally interested and exploring this new way of life.” Education is a big part of Dancing Rabbit’s mission – done well this would be a great way of reaching a huge audience.

The question then becomes “do I really want to expose my life on TV?” Even as an extrovert I admit to having more than a few qualms about that. Not only do I generally view people appearing in reality series as attention-seeking and narcissistic, but also wonder about their judgment (or lack thereof). There is also the lack of control in the editing process – the editors are going for “good TV” which is not always the same thing as “real,” nor do they care about any fallout their drama might produce in our individual lives.

I am grateful to the Outreach Team, which is doing a fantastic job of weighing the pros and cons. We’ll see where this path leads us; we don’t yet know if it will be to a dead end or to a more-aware-of-the-ecovillage-movement public. Stay tuned!

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer free tours to the public twice monthly from April-October. Our first tour of the year will be April 14 at 1pm. Meanwhile, for more information you can visit our website www.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.

Greetings! Tereza here, writing her first ever column in the 11+ years she’s lived at Dancing Rabbit!

Of course the top story continues to be the weather. The unseasonably warm temperatures mean folks are outdoors a lot, playing, hanging out–why, some of them are even working! (For those who may not know, this is a joke. Most Rabbits work their fluffy little tails off most of the time.) We’re prepping and planting and pruning, getting ready for another year of growing food for ourselves and our community-mates. Rumors in this area involve Cob pruning the raspberry bushes near the Community Building, and both Tom and Thomas experiencing invasions of cruel pea-shoot-nibbling varmints. Alline also announced at Sunday meeting the excellent news that she and Kurt harvested their very first asparagus spear! Hooray for spring!

Usually when it’s this warm outside there are oodles of short-term folks around, so having just our usual March population numbers on-farm makes for a relatively slow, low-key feeling. But we know we’re heading into the high season when we get our first trickle of new residents and work exchangers (WEXers), and it’s already seeming more like a stream! Former WEXer Haley finally finished school (and got her wisdom teeth out the same day, I hear) before returning as a resident last week, new resident SunGee came ready with a large yurt-like tent she plans to live in for the warmer months, and by my count at least 3 new WEXers are showing up this coming week. Welcome and welcome back, y’all! We’re excited that you’re joining us in our grand experiment and look forward to getting to know you!

The long awaited return of part singing was also welcomed this week. Over the years it has been difficult to find a critical mass of folks who are interested in learning and practicing different parts of songs in order to create beautiful harmony together. (I should mention that other key factors include being willing, able, and having enough time to commit to doing it– no wonder it’s taken so long to rekindle!) It’s been over a decade since I’ve personally done that kind of singing, and boy howdy, was I rusty. It was super fun, though, and despite several of us still having scratchy voices from the never-ending chest and cough crud that had been making the rounds, we sounded pretty good! I hope we can maintain our momentum in the busy weeks to come.

One of the most interesting events I heard about last week was a dance/birthday party for one of our youngest neighbors at Red Earth Farms, which was announced as “including dancing baby goats”. Now maybe I misunderstood, and I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend, but just imagining tiny goats frolicking around with all my little friends made my day much brighter!

Some of us participated in another interesting event this week, called a restorative circle. It’s a method of engaging with conflict by gathering everyone involved, communicating very clearly with one another about the impacts of the conflict, and making action plans to address various needs. You can read more about it at http://www.restorativecircles.org. It was a fascinating process, and I hope it will become another tool we can use for addressing this crucial and often difficult aspect of living together.

Conflict is inevitable in any group, and the ways we deal with it at DR are wide ranging. Some people prefer the time honored method of ignoring it and hoping it will go away. This rarely works well long term, however, so trying to communicate directly with the other participant(s) in the conflict is usually an excellent idea. Many folks first address themselves: figuring out what went on for them, what needs they were trying to meet that led them to act the way they did, and letting themselves actually feel whatever feelings they have about the situation. This is usually best done alone, or with a friend. Talking about it, crying, blowing off steam, basically doing whatever it takes to get the feelings out in a safe way without the other party present, makes it less likely that you’ll emotionally blast them. Unless you’re dealing with an ascended spiritual master (and quite frankly they aren’t too thick on the ground these days), that kind of blasting usually makes the situation worse. Both solo inner work and talking with a friend will often lead to more openness to the other person’s perspective, which can make a huge difference in how things feel once face to face communication happens.

If for any reason someone doesn’t feel able to meet with the other party on their own, there are almost always uninvolved folks who can be asked to step in and assist. We have a Conflict Resolution Team that maintains a list of Rabbits and friends from nearby communities who are willing to serve as mediators, and the Team is mandated to step in if a conflict arises that is significantly impacting the whole community. Very rarely an interpersonal conflict gets to the point where we bring it to the community at large; I can think of only a few times that this has happened in my lengthy tenure here. (The restorative circle held this week was not community-wide.)

One important note is that we have a standing agreement to solve conflicts non-violently. This sometimes leads to jokes about going across the road (i.e., off DR property) in order to fight it out, but we seriously are very committed to taking care of and supporting one another when conflict arises. I’m pretty impressed with how we engage with conflict at DR, especially as compared to the mainstream culture, and am glad to have witnessed yet another method that might help us continue to improve in this area.

Finally, a two-person film crew came to check DR out as a possible location for a documentary-type TV show about us. Exciting! Scary! I wasn’t involved with their short visit, but Alline was, so since she’s next in the rotation to write about DR happenings anyway, I’m going to let her share all the juicy details next week. If we’re lucky, she might even tell the truth, or at least that’s what she said when I asked her about it!

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in Rutledge, northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer free tours to the public twice monthly from April-October. Our first tour of the year will be April 14 at 1pm. Meanwhile, for more information you can visit our website www.dancingrabbit.org, read our blog The March Hare at blog.dancingrabbit.org, or give us a call at (660) 883-5511.