Memphis Democrat September 13, 2000

Last weekend felt like a party. Besides our normal visitors, we had quite a few exciting guests. Five folks from Stone Soup, a cooperative house in Chicago, came down for the weekend. Former intern Stephanie, who goes to Truman State, came by with four of her friends. Members Jess and Kalen stopped by for about 24 hours on their way between selling posters in Ohio and Iowa. For our Saturday tour, we had the parents of Andy, who is an intern at Sandhill, who came from Cincinnati.

We also have a new intern, Laurie, from Minneapolis. She was here just a few days before she fell off a bike and had to go to the emergency room for stitches in her chin. We've had bad luck recently, because Don was in there just last week for stitches in his hand from when he was cutting cabbage and slipped. The folks at the Memphis hospital are nice, but we hope to see less of them anyway.

I met with Lloyd Martin of Memphis about house moving, and learned quite a bit of other stuff too. It was a very pleasant conversation. I'm considering moving a house here, to reuse the materials without having to take them apart first.

Last week you heard about the earthen floor. It dried in record time and now we have started oiling the floor to protect it. We use linseed oil, with a citrus-based solvent. After a few coats of oil, the floor is ready to be used, and even be mopped.

We are working on trying to finish the plaster on our timber framed strawbale cabin. Its a big building and has been a long time in coming, but we just started the final coat of plaster. We're using a mix of our regular earthen plaster, with some lime mixed in to protect it from the weather.

We picked a whole lot of apples last week and this week we canned them. A crew canned 110 quarts of applesauce in one day, a new Dancing Rabbit record. And it was a hot day too. We also canned a few dozen jars of homemade sauerkraut.

After many hours working on the computer, we put up a redesigned version of our website. Those of you with internet access can see it at www.dancingrabbit.org.

Please mark your calendars for October 1st. We are having an open house that afternoon, as part of a celebration of the anniversary of the purchase of our land.