Our Land

On October 1, 1997, Dancing Rabbit closed on its new land and become the owner of 280 acres of beautiful Missouri rolling hills. After 4 years of working towards our goal of creating an ecologically sustainable town we finally own some land to do it on.

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Our land includes five ponds, a couple dozen acres of nice pasture, a creek that runs much of the year, a sometimes-flooded wetland in the bottomland, and about 60 acres of woods scattered around the steepest parts of the property. Our savannah-like combination of trees and fields means we've got a mini-biome for just about every ecological situation.Much of our land is open fields that are enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, a federal contract that pays us yearly to perform erosion-control measures, plant trees, and encourage wildlife conservation. These lands haven't been farmed for over a decade, so the soil is regaining the health it lost during years of over-farming. If we decide to take some fields out of CRP to grow food for sale, the land can be certified organic immediately.

In terms of structures, we own a sturdy large metal shed (suitable for storage, tractor maintenance, biodiesel production, a basketball court, or all of the above), four grain bins of various sizes, an open-sided pole barn good for housing draft horses or protecting an outdoor kitchen, and an assortment of old wooden sheds.

We'll be building our new town on the southeast corner of the property, served by a gravel road and where there are several existing outbuildings. Exactly where town center should lie is still the subject of much debate.

Articles from our Newsletter about the surrounding area:

A new town, a new plan - 10/97  --  Getting our town centered  --  Restoring forest and prairie --  A Dancing Rabbit Pattern Language  --  A Story of the Land  --