Memphis Democrat May 17, 2001

Day to Day Life
Memphis Democrat Column -- Jacob's Travel Logs

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This has been another week of extraordinary numbers of visitors. Our old friend Melissa and her friend Tiffany stopped for a few ways on their way to Alaska. Melissa is moving to Sitka, AK to become the director of the Raptor Rehabilitation Center there. We also had a visit from former intern Amy Best, who is currently going to graduate school in Ames, IA.

A college class from Carroll University from Minneapolis visited us for a few days. They are taking a class about communities that includes a several week expedition to communities around the country. They helped us mulch paths and the trees we planted.

One night a traveling folksinger from MA named Adrienne Jones stayed with us and give us a performance on the open second floor of Skyhouse at sunset. It was the most lovely setting for a concert I've ever seen.

We had four new interns arrive. Kit, artist in residence, and Emily, general intern, are both students at Truman State who we're lucky enough to have here for a few months. Aaron, construction intern, arrived from Nebraska, and we soon discovered he went to the same high school as Emily, just a year apart. Brian joined us as a general intern from Rhode Island.

In order to handle all the new campers, many of the interns and residents came together to build five new tent platforms in one day. We hope that will last a little while.

We also had a few people stop by for the day. The Brown family of four, from Keokuk ,stopped by because they were interested in possibly moving here. The Stogdills, who have a chiropractor office in Memphis and own tipis, visited with Sol to talk tipis. And then John Long, from Fort Collins, CO, stopped by in his biodiesel powered van, on his tour of biodiesel points of interest.

With all those new people coming we gave a lot of tours. And then we had our Saturday tour group. Judy Sharp from Greensburg, Katy Kitchen from Excello and Shelly Abdel-Khader from Callao came together to have a look around. But we soon found out the real purpose of their visit. They are all avid quilters and once they confirmed that Alline was the same, the quilt talk began. They were quite a fun group to show around and we hope to see them again soon.

Susan and Eric, who arrived a few weeks ago in their camper interested in membership, have been accepted as residents. Residency is a status we set up for people who want to stay here awhile and try out what its like to be here as members. We're happy to see them make that decision and hope they'll decide to join us for the long haul.

We're regularly feeding over 20 hungry mouths at each meal these days. With more people here, we got more work done. Folks finished building the trellises that we put up to protect the plaster on the north side of Allium. On one long day a crew did most of the finish coat of plaster on the inside of Bella Ciao. And the construction team got the fourth set of trusses assembled and in place.

Our gardens are recovering from the hail and erosion damage from that incredible storm. We didn't have salad for a few days but we're back on track, and the strawberries are just coming in. By the way, since we're so new here, our fruit trees don't produce much yet. We're willing to pick unsprayed fruit (including strawberries, gooseberries, grapes, currants, sour cherries and any other tree fruit) in the greater Rutledge area in exchange for keeping half. So let us know if you want the fruit but don't want to pick.

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