Memphis Democrat
April 19, 2007

Rachel reporting on another week at Dancing Rabbit. Boy, between the cold, rain and the tax preparation, it's been dreary around here! It was awfully sad to see all the flowers on the fruit trees shrivel up and die in the cold. But as the warmer weather and sun have returned, things have been looking a little more up.

There have actually been quite a few good things happening around here. We're still receiving the spring influx of new residents. Sparky has returned and Jan arrived from Michigan. We also had a nice visit from my friends Denis and Goody-B. They stopped by for a few days on the trip from Denis' hometown in Indiana to their home in Los Angeles. Denis is a film maker and took a little footage while he was here, so maybe you'll get the chance to see us on TV.

We had an extraordinarily busy Saturday tour line up. The Expanding Environmental Consciousness class from Truman comes every semester for a tour. They gave back too, lending their muscles to the Ironweed garden. Another Truman class, Organizational Behavior, also came for a tour and had some interesting questions. To fill out the already large crowd, several folks came from Abundance Ecovillage in Fairfield, IA, to check out our straw bale buildings.

Amy and Tamar went with our friend Judy to Quincy. There is an old-time music group that plays every Thursday and Tamar jumped in and played along on her fiddle. I attended my first University Extension Council meeting, and narrowly escaped elected office. Maybe they'll catch me next year.

Things have been hopping over at the Milkweeds. They have Rory, Amanda and Jason cutting their (saw) teeth on a wood shed while waiting for construction on Milkweed Mercantile to begin. It's about the nicest woodshed I've ever seen. They made a step this week towards breaking ground by meeting with health inspectors Phil from the county and Rochelle from Jefferson City, to talk about how they are going to do waste water treatment.

Tony B has been leading a group of folks to salvage some wood from the house near the corner of Smith Rd and M. I can't wait to see how he uses it to finish his house.

We celebrated Friday the 13th with a showing of Freaky Friday. I remember the original from the 70's, but the 2003 version was pretty entertaining for all ages.

We've been interested to hear there is a bill in the Missouri House and Senate to make it easier for people to do Net Metering. Net Metering is allowing people with local electricity production (like solar panels or wind generators) to hook directly into the electrical grid and only pay or be paid the difference between what they generate and what they use. It is a simpler and cheaper way for people to produce their own clean power. We hope that those folks in Jefferson City decide to support these bills.

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