I arrived at Dancing Rabbit in mid-May after a 500-mile bike trip through seas of corn and wheat in Nebraska and Kansas. Along the way, my companion and I spoke to farmers, scientists, and others about changes they had witnessed in their communities and in agriculture. The trends they spoke of - the monoculture of a few crops, the takeover of superstores like Wal-Mart, rural depopulation, and an agriculture increasingly dependent on a fossil fuel-driven food system - were all too apparent to two bikers swerving to avoid the constant flow of semis carrying processed foods from 1,500 miles away. From the road we saw farm machine graveyards and clouds of dust over raw fields. Polluted rivers carrying away chunks of eroded topsoil paralleled highways packed with young people migrating to the big cities.
At DR, on the other hand, I've learned that human communities can be like healthy prairie communities - a complex web of cooperation that is deeply rooted to the geography of a place. Here, the synergy of small town friendliness and cutting-edge ideas on ecological sustainability has revitalized me. While agriculture is not DR's emphasis, the Rabbits are working on the necessary precursor - a cultural and economic transformation.
I made the 3-mile trip to the nearest town of Rutledge the other day. Sufficiently far from an interstate highway, Rutledge (population 103) does not yet have a Wal-Mart. As I strolled down roads lined with chicory flower, the same color as the distant purple rain clouds, about a dozen strangers waved hello from their vehicles. Around here, I've been told, that's how you can distinguish locals from the out-of-towners; locals wave. Somehow those greetings from strangers felt genuine, quite unlike the programmed friendliness of the anonymous cashier in a big-city supermarket. Each wave felt like a promise that if I needed help, I'd just have to ask.
For sure, there are problems with life in the country. Let's not forget the xenophobia, narrow-mindedness and conservativism often encountered in rural areas. But there is a warmth here, a warmth that's dying with the old-timers I met in Marysville, Kansas. Marilyn's diner, one of two remaining independent stores in Marysville, at midday is packed with silver-headed ladies enjoying Marilyn's homemade strawberry pie. The town wasn't always like this, a long-time resident told me. There used to be a plethora of hardware stores, craft stores, banks, and other local businesses. Now, silhouetted against endless rows of corn, the Goliathan Wal-Mart provides one-stop shopping. But the convenience of Wal-Mart has a price: jobless, pulled by the illusory comforts of the city, young people are leaving rural areas in droves.
"There is a lot of poverty and enslavement out here," said Nancy Vogelsburg-Busch, an organic cattle farmer from outside Marysville, as we chatted over her kitchen table. Nancy, a single mother, is bucking cultural trends by raising her children on an organic farm where her only purchased agricultural input is rock salt for her cattle. However, in a state where there's a growing, but still tiny market for organic foods, selling her Bossie's Best homemade hot dogs is not enough. To keep her land and pay for health insurance, Nancy has to work three 12-hour night shifts at the local envelope factory. By her side on the assembly line, she says, are other struggling farmers.
A year ago in Lincoln, Nebraska, a few small-scale farmers faced a similar dilemma. Escalating costs of land and equipment and low returns had left them with little choice but to sell out to agribusiness or change their marketing technique. Unlike most of their peers who deal with their economic problems by increasing fertilizer inputs or using GMO seeds, these farmers were determined to farm organically. Hence the Centerville Market was born, a daily indoor farmer's market for mainly local, value-added products and crafts. John Ellis, one of the leading founders, has had to sell most of his farm to keep the new market afloat. In time, he would like to see the daily market become not only a business but a community venue for workshops, events, and meetings. In Lincoln, as elsewhere, such a vision is an anachronism amid superstores full of teetering towers of identical processed foods.
A native prairie system, like the food system John Ellis, Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch and Dancing Rabbit are attempting to create, is incredibly diverse and deep-rooted. Underneath the visible grass layer, which is only a tiny fraction of the total biomass, snake yards and yards of roots interacting in intricate symbioses with microorganisms and organic matter. Compass plant roots, for instance, reach up to 12 feet long!
Yellow, hanging like Rapunzel's locks, native grass roots make an impression. I saw them preserved at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas at an exhibit demonstrating the importance of deep-rooted perennial plants in holding down topsoil. Conventional agriculture, in contrast, relies predominantly on tilling and planting short-rooted annual crops. Researchers at the Land Institute are concerned with the rapid rate of topsoil loss, and say applying a drug cocktail of fertilizers and pesticides is like subjecting a dying land to chemotherapy. Instead, they hope to develop what they call a Natural Systems Agriculture approach centering on perennial grain polycultures that mimic ecological patterns.
Researchers there see agriculture as it has been for the past few thousand years as inherently flawed. Although they are using human ingenuity to breed a new type of agriculture, they do so with a humility that recognizes that Nature knows best.
Maybe we should take a similar approach and model a food system in which "people, land and community are as one," as the Land Institute's mission statement says. Much of mainstream society is caught within the gears of an industrialized agriculture system that is disconnecting people from each other and from the land. Yet Dancing Rabbit has the potential to change this. Tonight's dinner at our subcommunity consisted of squash harvested from our garden, tomato sauce from last year's canning, and a crisp made from freshly-picked rhubarb. While it's not a DR goal, many who live here are working towards food self-sufficiency. Recultivating a sense of place is the first step in that direction.
Searching for the eggs nestled in the chicken coop straw can be a treasure hunt. Immersing oneself in a forest of baby carrots until all that's visible is tiny stalks can be an adventure. Harvesting summer squash by the glow of an apricot sunset becomes a meditation. Eating local food not only makes sense environmentally and economically, but it makes life more vivid.
A local food network is emerging here at Dancing Rabbit, a network that can put the culture back into agriculture, the nutrients back into the soil and humans into a functioning ecosystem.
Let's re-root the food we eat, and ourselves.
Ingrid Evjen-Elias is a summer work-exchanger from Berkely, California. She is unceasingly amazed by how quickly squash grow at Dancing Rabbit.
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