Memphis Democrat
|
|
Next Tour |
Home
About Us
Join Us
Contribute
Eco Living
People
Natural Building
Food
Culture
Co-ops
Weekly Update
Newsletters
DRTV
Online Tour
Open House
Blogs & Links
Contact Us
Biodiesel
Consensus Facilitation Training
See Also:
Stay at the Eco-Inn at Dancing Rabbit
Communities Directory
Intentional Communities - Ecovillages, Communes, Cohousing, and more
Intentional Community Bookstore|
Hello again from the busy warrens of Dancing Rabbit! Ted here, with
an update. As Summer coasts to a close here, we're all plugging away at our assorted tasks. Fruit picked by Tony with the help of many of our visitors has been processed in many forms in several kitchens this week, turning into everything from sauce to pie to dried slices squirreled away for winter. Food put up for the winter feels a lot more valuable to me than money, in all honesty. Not having grown up with too much gardening or any food preserving tradition in my family, I have yet to fall out of love with this process, despite the labor involved. In Ironweed this year we've focused almost exclusively on drying foods because it takes the least amount of labor and we have no time to spare if we're to get our kitchen closed up for winter. Drying, done properly at 110 degrees or lower, preserves most of the bursting nutrients in the fruit and vegetables, and stores quite compactly compared to wet preparations that have a high water content. So if you're interested in food preservation but don't have a lot of time or energy to devote to it, consider drying. Old food dehydrators can often be found at yard sales, or if you're interested, you could contact us here at DR for some rough solar dehydrator design assistance. Here's to a bountiful harvest this fall, with our produce all the more precious in light of the drought. As mentioned above, Ironweed is in a long slog this Fall to get our kitchen's cob walls put up and the space closed in for Winter, and got a huge boost from the help of many of our visitors this week. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, cob is a mixture of clay, sand and straw that can be used as a load-bearing structural material. In old English the word cob means roughly "a lump of earth", and relates to the loaf-size lumps sometimes used to transfer the finished product from the stomping pit or tarp to the person or people adding the mass to the wall. But it is similar in many respects to the earthen construction styles found all over the world, from adobe to earthen bricks and so on. Cob, built into massive walls, holds the heat gathered from the sun during the day or one's wood stove or other heater at other times, and re-radiates that heat evenly, helping to maintain a relatively steady temperature inside no matter what the weather outside. Though some of the walls are strawbale, this is the first building at DR with a major cob component, and we're anxious to see how it performs. The artistic possibilities with cob are extensive, and we're starting to explore some of them in the sculpting of the walls. The group of visitors with us right now consists of those folks from our current visitor session who are most interested in membership, and wanted to stay at Dancing Rabbit a bit longer to get a more realistic feel for the place and whether they'd like to live here. It seems to have been successful, as Phil, one of the visitors, expressed his interest in becoming a resident at our meeting yesterday, and was welcomed to join us as such starting immediately at the end of the his visitor period. The continued interest in residency and membership at DR this year has as always been extremely gratifying. I'd be excited to see more of this group apply for membership-- they have all been positive, helpful, and hard-working, jumping in on all manner of projects and chores, and I've had some great conversations with them on a range of topics as well. Eli and Meredith left mid-week after spending lots of time with Rowan, Cynder and Torin in the preceding days. We wish them safe journey. At our meeting yesterday we also approved a new power installation, with Tim planning to install a much larger wind turbine than either of the two currently erected on farm, and a solar array that will automatically track the sun's path through the day, thus increasing its power production significantly. The federal energy bill for the upcoming year includes a major tax credit for all new alternative energy production installations, so if you've been considering adding some solar panels or a wind turbine to your power scene and reducing your reliance on the increasingly burdened power grid, now is a good time to make it happen. With oil prices seemingly going only up, and a significant portion of our national power usage still reliant on oil and its derivatives, alternative energy prices are becoming ever more competitive. Let us know if you have any questions on this topic-- we can help! I hear Dan has a working sink in his house now, and is almost to where he can take a bath or shower in his house as well. With Skyhouse employing a number of members in an effort to finish their upstairs bathroom, this may be the winter that private facilities start to reduce the usage of our shared systems, making a little room for our continued growth through new membership. Onward and upward! |
Reasonable uses authorized without permission.
All other uses Copyright ©1996-2009
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage | Sustainable Community Living | Intentional Community Living
Maintained by the DR Website Committee at Dancing Rabbit. Contact us.