Memphis Democrat October 25, 2000

For a few short days we had all of our members and residents home at the same time. Kalen returned from his long journey and its a pleasure to see his smiling face around the farm again. And Alline returned from her temporary job helping open stores and decided she wanted to stay home for awhile. But sadly before the week was out, we were incomplete again. Cecil left on a vacation to California. Susan traveled to Washington DC to do a little work as an assistant to disabled folks. Intern Kellifern also left this week, with a carload of visitors heading to Twin Oaks, a community in Virginia.

We had some fun and got lots done this week while we were all home. Susan is fluent in American Sign Language and several other folks understand it to varying degrees. We had a table at dinner one night where no one could speak and we all had to communicate using Sign Language.

Susan and Alline had a blast visiting the meeting of Omicron Theta, a community service sorority in Memphis. They hope they'll recognize all the folks they met there, but it might be hard because everyone was in Halloween costumes. Thanks Lorie McBee for inviting us and we hope we see more of each other in the future.

An alternative middle school in Edina came by with their students for a tour one afternoon, led by Jeffrey. It was fun to see meet such interesting young people and answer their questions.

Jess and her crew of interns finished converting the outdoor kitchen into a strawbale bunkhouse for temporary winter housing. Its pretty cosy in there. They hosted a "bunk-warming" dance party to celebrate a job well done.

Kalen has been bustling around trying to finish the walls of his house as fast as he can. He finished filling his walls with insulative straw coated with clay. Now he just needs to seal them up with plaster.

After several long days of work, a crew of folks finished building a temporary roof on Skyhouse, to protect it from the winter weather until they can resume building in the spring. And as the last warm days of the season are upon us, Jacob has been busy leading folks in trying to finish the outside plaster on the timberframed and load bearing strawbale buildings, while we still can.

But we realize that winter is creeping upon us. We've been trying to winterize our buildings and clean up our outdoor projects, while enjoying the warm weather and colorful leaves.