It's been a hot, dry summer! Luckily, our berries and gardens are still going
strong. Some very big and exciting news is the addition of a new member dog,
Maya. Oh, and her friend Tamar joined us as a human member! We also welcomed Penn
and Gare as members, too. We're glad that they've all decided to stay long term,
and you, dear reader, can now look forward to their bios in upcoming issues. This
brings our adult membership to its highest number ever, with fifteen Rabbits
calling our ecovillage their permanent home. Of course, this makes members just
half of our summertime population of 30 people (more or less). But we're hoping
some of those other fifteen folks just might end up sticking around for the
winter...
In other news, Susan and Erik have leased a warren and are doing
amazing things with it. Bella Ciao's exterior plaster, with beautiful sculptures
of the sun and moon courtesy of Megan and Village interns, is finished. Skyhouse
has been working on exterior plaster, interior plaster, and finishing several
bedrooms. Complete with painting and trim, they're looking wonderful and almost
ready to move in. With 40 solar panels now mounted on the roof, all power to
them! On a sadder note, we often miss Kurt, who's been working off the farm with
a contractor friend quite a bit, and look forward to his being around more in the
near future. As a group we've been talking about building a new common house to
replace the trailer we rent that isn't on our land. It's exciting and scary to
think of doing such a big group project.
Summer is when we hit our population peak at DR, so we've gotten quite a few new
faces. In the intern arena, Martha, from Ontario (yes, another Canadian!), and
Ann, an American who grew up in Singapore and studied Spanish in college, have
added an international flair to the Village intern scene. (On a side note: we
think DR may now have the highest percentage of people who speak a language other
than English in this part of the state. Between us we have Russian, Spanish,
Italian, French, German, American Sign Language, Latin, and some Chinese,
Ukrainian, Croatian and others.) Village interns have been helping with all kinds
of projects, perhaps the most impressive of which has been demolishing the
falling/fallen down barn.
All the way from Chicago, we have Jillian, our first
ever Cattail Eating Coop intern. She will be working in the herb garden and doing
food processing, as well as working on some other undetermined helpful projects.
Some ideas include a Dancing Rabbit cookbook, a canning manual, or making it
easier to make tofu so we can eat more of it. In the garden we have two new
interns: Nicole, who's from NY, completely denies the rumors about her and
Michael Jackson, and Karly, from Texas, is second of nine kids, so seems to be
dealing well with the numbers of people here. And Betsy is a new resident, here
for several months to help Skyhouse with their building and Don in the garden.
We also said goodbye to Kalen as a member, and wished him luck on his future
travels. Tamar has purchased his house- the first such transaction at DR.
We Rabbits sure do get around. Several folks went on a week-long bike trip on the
Katy trail in central MO and reported only minor saddle sores among all their
fun. Several more Rabbits went to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Wisconsin,
and returned with tons of stories and great ideas for solar food dryers. Cecil
and Alyson went to Siberia to install a demonstration solar power system at a
remote campground retreat in the mountains. Cecil even went from there to
China-for a date! Luckily, things turned out well.
The annual canoe tripin honor of Cecil's birthday was a blast. Herons and a goat and ducks and
domestic canines were spotted, tasty food from home was consumed, and laughter
and singing were rampant. Two moments stand out as highlights for this writer.
Watching Cecil, dressed in his US flag shorts, running in the barely waist high
water to catch his canoe, in which sat Nicole, giggling as she noted that she
wasn't paddling, was priceless. But maybe best of all was coming around a bend to
see a mass of canoes in the middle of the river, filled with DR folk belting out
"O, Canada!" at the top of their lungs. Who cares that not everyone knew the
words? By the end of the summer, you can bet they will.
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