Memphis Democrat
February 16, 2006

Hello again from Ted with this week's news from Dancing Rabbit. We've just finished the second half of this year's retreat. Despite there being as in past years the occasional topic that takes a while to work through and decide on, at the conclusion we all remarked on the high level of positivity and relative unanimity in getting behind our goals for the year. I have had to learn to temper my expectations of what is a reasonable level of accomplishment to expect in a year's time here, being a lifelong (over-) optimist, but I'm extremely excited to be at what feels like the edge of some major leaps ahead in our efforts here at DR. Among other things, we'll be devoting lots of time and energy to the education side of our outreach efforts, which will hopefully mean we get a chance to talk to more students and others in this area. We'll also be transitioning our entire visitor program toward the model we experimented with last year, where we have lots of visitors all at once rather than a couple at a time. We have a number of new residents and members this year who were among the first to partake of the program last year, and we have high hopes for continued growth this year.

As a side note to the retreat, I was impressed with the number of sewing and knitting projects that were accomplished during the many hours of meetings. This happens every year, but I'm always glad to see that the numbers of women and men working on such projects are usually about equal around here.

Those of you living nearby here will have experienced the return to frigid weather toward the end of last week. In an unusually mild winter such as this, I seem to be much better able to gripe about global warming while still loving and making the best of the balmy days, than I am to welcome the return of hanging laundry in the bitter cold. On a warmer note, though, at long last our new boiler arrived this week, foretelling future winter retreats with toasty warm feet all around. It'll be great to see it up and running, and to finally make proper use of the radiant floor heating system installed in our Common House. Erik appears well prepared to make the installation.

Believe it or not, the gardening season is already coming up on the horizon. In our Ironweed meeting last week we sat down to set our garden and orchard plans for the year, and discovered that we were already a week behind when we started seeding onions and brassicas in the greenhouse last year. So we had a work party to get the greenhouse cleaned up and prepared, only to find that our store of potting mix was frozen solid. Tamar has gotten it worked up and started sterilizing some, though, so we're ready to start. Can't wait to see all the wee sprouts coming up in the next few weeks!

Jenn returned to us Friday after the new member ritual of driving her truck back to her home in Tennessee to leave it there. Not all new members own their own vehicles, but those who do have six months to sell it or otherwise dispose of it, since one of our ecological covenants states that members may not own personal vehicles. Among other facts we learned in one of the retreat sessions over the weekend, the biofuels committee informed us that the nearly 30 members of the Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Cooperative (DRVC) collectively drove about 24,000 miles last year, using about 750 gallons of diesel fuel (including some petrodiesel, owing to local biodiesel supply problems and winter needs). We're always working to improve our ride sharing efforts, but I was impressed with the relatively low number of miles we logged.

That's it for this week!

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