Memphis Democrat July 26, 2000

It was a hustle bustle week at Dancing Rabbit with all the comings and goings. Rachel is in Washington DC for a week attending a leadership conference for young women so this is Tony here filling in. Alline left town for a few weeks as well to lead a backpacking trip in Hawaii, while Timothy Jean went off to Boston to visit friends from college. But luckily Cecil and Jeffrey returned from their trips out east with fun stories to tell of New York and Virginia.

Speaking of Virginia we have had two sets of visitors from other community groups in Virginia. A family came through from Acorn community for a few days to learn about strawbale building on their way to visit friends and family in Nebraska and beyond. Our fiends, Paxus and Jana, from Twin Oaks gave Jeffrey a ride from Virginia and are staying a few days to help out and talk about a cooperative computing business we may collaborate on. And if that wasn’t enough our old friend Shey from California was through for 3 days after visiting family near Omaha, Nebraska. She's having a blast seeing fireflies again (they don't have them on the West Coast) and is hoping to get a good Midwestern thunderstorm before she returns to the west.

Beth Johnson and her family, including out-of-town relatives from Little Rock, came by for a visit and tour. Jacob had fun showing them around and comparing notes between life at Dancing Rabbit and the life Laura Ingalls Wilder describes in Little House on the Prairie. We also had a wonderful visit from Irene Mayfield and her friend from Arizona on our last Saturday tour.

The gardens have kept us well fed and busy canning again this week. Our first sweet corn was harvested to cheers at dinner as was the 5 gallons of wild blackberries picked Monday morning. The berries were turned into 22 pints of jam which joined pickles, beets, corn and green beans this week in our collection of food for the winter. Plus we were able to freeze a gallon or more of pesto after picking 10 gallons of basil leaves. It was a fair bit of work but at least it smelled good.

We also had a great plant walk this week, which intern Alexis led along Woehrle Road. Our specific goal was to check out field of native gamma grass, now in flower, which belongs to our neighbor, Oren Erickson. We saw a number of native prairie flowers along the way including compass-plant, gray headed cone flower, wild bergamot, tall bellwort, cup plant, prairie milkweed, rosin weed, and Solomon's seal. It is amazing how many of our native plants are preserved along our roadsides and creek beds.

We had a wonderful time seeing State Fair at the Memphis theater. Some folks went on opening night and some on closing night (and I thought it was so great I went both nights).

You can still hear people around DR humming "Our state fair is a great state fair..." But then again you can occasionally hear them still humming tunes from Paint Your Wagon. We look forward to the possibility of joining in the fun next year.

We welcome folks to come by for a tour Saturdays at 1pm, but please call first at 883-5511.

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