Almost exactly a year after moving to Missouri, and four years after starting this eco-town adventure, Dancing Rabbit finally owns land. Now we are the proud owners of 280 acres of rolling Missouri hills three miles from Sandhill Farm and one mile from the town of Rutledge. Needless to say, excitement is all around.
The land officially belongs to the Dancing Rabbit Land Trust, Inc., a Missouri non-profit applying for federal, tax-exempt 501(c)2 status (a designation specifically for land trusts). We were fortunate enough to be able to buy the land without taking out a bank loan. Instead we borrowed money (some at very low interest) from members, their families, and from the Federation of Egalitarian Communities PEACH fund, a community health insurance fund which invests in loans to communities. Now we finally have the ground where we can make our eco-town a reality. See "A new town, a new plan" to find out more about our land and our plans.
Seasons Change
In other news we have had a great summer and are now moving into fall again, which around here means sorghum harvest. During late September and October, people come in droves, many of them old friends from other communities, to help harvest the sorghum at Sandhill and turn it into sorghum molasses. This also signals the beginning of DR's second year in Missouri; now we have been through a full cycle of the seasons here in our new home. Soon we will move again into winter time - a more relaxed time where we can finally get to those projects that were put off during the busy summer.
Parties
Luckily our Dancing Rabbit Land Day falls during the bountiful time of harvest. At our first Land Day party we had an impressive turnout with almost forty people stopping by for the land walk, potluck, and campfire sing along. It was exciting to see how many new friends we had made in this area since our first housewarming party last winter. Wonder how many we might have at our Land Day party next year?
Speaking of parties, the town of Rutledge had a town fair in late September where the whole town came out to have some fun on a Saturday afternoon. There were lots of games for kids and adults alike; Sandhill and DR both fielded a volleyball team and made a fair showing in the tournament. There was a stage with live music including Rabbits Rachel F. soloing on guitar and Cecil playing trombone in the grand finale jam session. It was great to get a chance to meet more of the local folks in a fun and social situation.
Taking some Eco-Steps
The past few months have seen some great steps forward in DR's progress towards being more sustainable. The garden has been abundant and we've grown all our vegetables for the summer and have canned and preserved what we hope is enough for the winter--over 500 glass canning jars full of homegrown and home processed jams, jellies, fruits, vegetables, juices, sauces and more! We will still need to buy staples like beans and grains and we didn't grow quite enough of favorites like garlic, onions, and potatoes, but we can get some things like organic wheat and soybeans from Sandhill. And now that we have our own flour mill we can make all our bread from Sandhill wheat. See "Harvest moon".
We also took an alternative energy step and got ourselves a super-efficient Sunfrost refrigerator. We now have our fridge running off of solar panels and are learning a lot about what it will be like when we can get totally off the grid. See "Cool stuff" for more details.
On the vehicle scene, our legally incorporated Car Sharing Co-op is operational. This will allow DR residents and anyone nearby to own vehicles cooperatively and sign them out on a per need basis. As far as we know this may be the only working car co-op in the US and we hope it can be a model for others to follow who want to reduce their automobile dependence. More details in "Car co-op gears up".
But wait, there's more! This summer we learned how to make automotive diesel fuel out of used cooking oil. Folks from the "Veggie Van" came through on their cross country media blitz and took the time to show us the ins and outs of making Biodiesel. Now we are getting the equipment together to be able to make all our own fuel so we can fulfill our goal of getting Dancing Rabbit off petroleum. See "DR begins biodiesel production".
As usual, there's a lot going on at Dancing Rabbit. We'd love to have visitors and we look forward to new members joining us in our community and future eco-town. We hope you enjoy this issue of the March Hare, and once you've finished reading, feel free to pass it on to someone you think might be interested in Dancing Rabbit.
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