Memphis Democrat
December 17, 2007

Tony here at Dancing Rabbit where we are celebrating the return of the sun a little early this year. Normally we would celebrate the sun's return on winter solstice, still a few days away, but after a full eight days of clouds there was much joy when we finally got some sunshine this week. Not only is the gloomy weather depressing in its general greyness but when you are living on solar power, that many grey days can mean candle-lit evenings and minimal use of computers and other electric devices all day. Some folks here have windmills to compliment their solar array but this week the wind was also still, so that proved little help. But we all survived and enjoyed many an evening playing games or just talking by candle light.

Given that we were already low on power we didn't notice when our neighbors lost theirs too in the big ice storm. We weathered the storm OK with hardly a fallen branch (but I did see a few rabbits fall on their bums walking about the village). The sunshine also turned the whole world into a twinkling lightshow while also stimulating avalanches of ice tinkling down from trees as you walked by. Quite a sight.

With so many folks gone for the holidays its been pretty quiet lately. Its fun for me when people say "it's such a small group" at a meeting or potluck dinner, as I count the crowd and note that it is 2-3 times the size of DR's full population 10 years ago when we were just six of us. Amazing to have grown to 40 people in such a short time.

Juan and Amy celebrated Juan's birthday this week with a trip to Kirksville for dinner and a movie. They were lucky to make it given the icy roads and how many other trips got cancelled this week.

We also enjoyed our annual cookie exchange. Amy, myself, Dave, Genevieve, BJ, Rowan, and Alline all baked cookies and got together to trade varieties so we all got a little bit of everything. Cookies included buckeyes, spritz cookies, O'Henry bars, blueberry scones, peanut-jelly thumbprint, chocolate chip oatmeal, apricot jam bars with marzipan crust (my favorite), and peanut butter coconut (see photo below). It was an odd mix of some all natural local ingredients (flour from Sandhill wheat and their sorghum for instance) and refined sugar and margarine. All but one variety was vegan and it will hard not to get sick eating them all this week. Luckily we have plenty of people to share with.

With Tamar back Ironweed was all on the farm for the first time in two months. But that lasted only for a few days before Ted, Sara and Aurelia left to visit family. I took the opportunity to invite all of Ironweed over for dinner and made Ethiopian. Ethiopian food is generally served with a sourdough flatbread, called injera, which is used to scoop up bites of food from a communal plate. Its both delicious and a fun departure from the normal plate and fork scene.

We had a surprise visit from Brian Toomey and his friend Ambrose. Brian was an intern at DR in 2001 and hadn't been seen around these parts in over five years. He's moving from Berkeley to Brooklyn and luckily we were right on the way. It was great to see him again and he was quite impressed with all the changes in the last 5 years. There was lots of late night talk about permaculture, psychology, and carbon farming (farming in such a way to build topsoil and remove atmospheric carbon to mitigate global climate change).

Alyssa, Bear, and Tamar attended Edna Huber's funeral on friday. They reported receiving a warm welcome despite the sad occasion. It was great to hear how many came out to honor one who had done so much for her community through her life's work. Our condolences to all who knew her or were touched by her.

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