Memphis Democrat
March 13, 2003

Hi everyone! This is Alline filling in for Rachel again. She’s gearing up for a project in collaboration with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Her research, which includes how burning affects grassland birds, their predators and their prey on CRP ground in Missouri, will be in tandem with her quest for a Master’s degree. She’s looking for a local landowner (2-15 miles from Dancing Rabbit) who has at least 200 acres in CRP. She would need access to the land for three years, and a promise from the landowner not to manage the land during that time. What does the landowner get in return? The opportunity to learn more about the natural inhabitants on your land, to see what benefits CRP presents, AND the satisfaction of helping an enthusiastic student. If you have land that might be appropriate and you’re willing to help, please call and talk with Rachel.

Kurt, Susan W., Cecil and Erik, our Land Use Planning Committee, have been hard at work. It’s an exciting prospect to be able to design a village from the ground up, but does take endless meetings, lots of land walks, hours and hours of discussion and a vivid imagination. One of the more interesting topics recently is lease fees. This involves the possibility of charging different fees for different land uses. Perhaps we’ll charge a higher lease fee for a business near town center than a home adjacent to that business, as we want to encourage both to ensure a lively business and social area, proper density and to avoid ‘suburban’ sprawl. We’re also considering significantly lower fees for land used for farming and gardening, with intense market gardening plots lower than say, a lot for a house, and land for row crops and orchards being lower still. Our intention is to be sustainable in all ways – financially, ecologically and socially.

Penn, Andra and Gare returned from their travels Sunday afternoon, but as of the Mem Dem deadline, this reporter has not seen hide nor hair of ‘em! Tamar is back from her month traipsing around Europe. She had a great time, and has decided that a month wasn’t quite enough. So she took a ‘snow day’ and went cross-country skiing with Gigi from Sandhill, watched Kurt install kitchen cabinets, and generally took it easy. But today she’s mixing up planting mix to start her garden seedlings, tonight some 4-H’ers are coming over for ecological instruction, and tomorrow fiddle lessons begin again. I think her vacation is finally over.

The intrepid Thomas Kortkamp has returned to Dancing Rabbit. Yippee! He rode his bike from Pekin, Illinois. The first day he got as far as McComb. On day two a kind soul on his way to the Dog & Gun sale picked Thomas up in Kahoka and dropped him off at Zimmerman’s. While this was great for Thomas, it was disappointing to Steph and Tamar, who had planned to bike out and ride in with him. Since beautiful downtown Rutledge wasn’t enough of a challenge they biked to Gorin, where they had French fries at a wonderful place there. They enjoyed the hospitality and are hoping to return again. I hope that by next week I’ll have the name of the place to pass along!

Just when I was thinking it was almost spring (flocks of geese overhead, red-winged blackbirds returning, etc.) along comes snow, snow, and more snow. So I’m resigned to winter for at least a few more weeks. And there is no more sure sign of winter than Alline slipping on the ice and falling painfully and embarrassingly. Boy oh boy, do I slip and slide! Fortunately, I found the GREATEST solution at Zimmerman’s General Store. They are little chain and rubber things that slip on over one’s shoes, kind of like snow chains for the feet. I was afraid I had reached the ultimate in dorkdom, but the other Rabbits thought they were tremendously cool. The REALLY cool thing is that they work! I purchased mine last year for $1.29. This year they’ve gone up to $1.39, but I still think it’s well worth it. Check it out!

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