All posts by : Ted

Happy summer, friends! Ted here to bring you the news from Dancing Rabbit in this week of longest days and shortest nights. Not to mention a good bit more rain and some hyper-local lightning storms here in northeast Missouri.

We’re in the thick of the early berry harvest, plucking raspberries nearly every day, with black raspberries coming into their first flush and the later variety of raspberries coming on shortly. Prompt harvest is absolutely required in steady wet weather; those little sugar pops are as good fodder for mold as for eating when conditions are warm and steadily moist. June-bearing strawberries are tapering off but still producing, sending out copious shoots that we carefully direct toward optimal locations for next year’s bounteous crop. Elderberries are in their most extravagant bloom, each cluster looking like the best serving of whipped cream one could imagine, portending another harvest in a month or so.

I’m especially happy to have such a robust black raspberry harvest coming on, which I attribute to the mild, extremely wet weather pattern we’ve seen so far this spring and early summer. I first planted them in the garden maybe five years ago, with additions along the way. Each of the past three years or so they’ve succumbed to June dry-outs, when the weather has turned hot and dry, and the wee berries, after early promise, shriveled into hard bumps on the canes as the plants save themselves for the future instead of trying to ripen berries at the expense of their enduring health. Nature always seems to save some for later. Some hotter dry weather is starting to appear in the forecast, but for this year, later has finally come!

Soft-neck garlic is also ready to start pulling this week. We’re just a week off of the normal harvest date of July 1, but as the wet weather continues, I worry that the enveloping skins of the garlic head will keep deteriorating to where the individual cloves are exposed and they won’t keep for long. We’re still consuming the last of 2018’s garlic crop, with gleaned, peeled cloves persisting in jars in the fridge. It is hard to ignore the value of a foodstuff that one can eat, from a home-grown supply, from one year to the next without much of a break. Maintaining that supply means getting most of the garlic crop harvested and cured for the future despite the weather. The garlic harvest is a lengthy process, from harvest to pulling the best heads for seed (saved, sorted, and planted in fall), bundling, drying, sometimes braiding, and otherwise curing the garlic for long storage, steady use, and renewing the crop. I approach it eagerly each year; an anchor of our local agriculture, perennially renewed and refined in the annual passage of seasons.

It is also hard to ignore the impact of this year’s wet weather on farmers in our region. Returning home a week past with various Rabbits from Village Fire, a singing event up in Decorah, Iowa that we’d gone to, I watched the fields go by on the road and observed the effects of farming style, soil type, weather, and geographical chance on the plants growing all around us. Those lucky enough to have gotten their seed in the ground in the rare patches of favorably weather this spring have beautiful crops where they weren’t washed out of the field, but there is clearly a lot of low ground that didn’t get planted in the normal period and in some cases appears not yet to have been planted at all, perhaps a lost cause for the year. As I work, I’m finding myself thinking about crop insurance, climate change, and our government’s offers of relief to various sectors of the farm economy. It is a complex business, this global economy.

The rain washed out Land Day for our friends at Red Earth Farms on Friday, midsummer’s eve. It is the first time I can remember such an occurrence, but these things will come sooner or later in the life of a community. At the moment I hear there’s a rain date of Tuesday upcoming to engage in that celebration. I’m excited to join in, and planning to take a swim in each of the Red Earth ponds along the tour. Meanwhile, the firefly manifestation in the woods that separate our two land trusts, so epic last year, is growing evening by evening.

Cheesemaking continues down at Ironweed. With three of us on the task this year (Avi and Prairie are sharing cheese-making duties), it feels a little less burdensome to me. Amidst all the electrical storms this year, one of my primary worries is making sure the GFI outlet at my mother’s house in Rutledge, where we age most of our hard cheeses, has not tripped and stopped power to the refrigerator. In warmer weather the whey cultures that we rely on to carry the right mix of bacteria from one batch of cheese to the next can go off a bit and require re-starting from frozen culture. I’m grateful to have those resources, and I am also keen to learn, over time, what culture is native to this place, and what kind of cheese comes only from here; a life-long quest, no doubt.

Swim Team began last week in Memphis, Missouri, occupying each morning for our local swimmers. A rotation of their various parents signed up to ferry them to the pool in Memphis each weekday morning for coach Trinity Davis’s steady guidance. Under-10s had their first meet this past Saturday, and everybody else has a first this coming Wednesday. More than one morning was impacted by active rain or threatening lightning this first week, and I don’t envy the kids jumping in the cool pool in early mornings. As we plan attendance at practices and meets through the next couple months, I’m again glad to live amongst conscientious ride-share practitioners.  

My daughter Aurelia turns 13 in a week; she was born and raised here in northeast Missouri. That’s longer than I’d lived anywhere before I moved here in 2003, and I’m still very glad of our choices. Sara’s parents came for an early visit this past weekend, managing to host both a lunch-and-movie day for Aurelia and friend Zane, as well as a pontoon boat afternoon for Aurelia and friend Emma on the one good, sunny afternoon at Thousand Hills State Park, outside Kirksville, Missouri. Next week her paternal grandmother, and possibly one or more cousins and an aunt, will arrive to visit for a couple weeks. I can only say that I have deeply appreciated the support and visits of our various family members over the years, and enjoyed watching the way family and friends visiting other members (and sometimes electing to take up residence in the neighborhood) has ended up contributing to all of our lives.

In the other direction, I want to send an appreciation to our fellow communitarian, Danielle, who left on short notice last weekend to lend practical and emotional support to a family medical situation out east. She has kept us informed of the progress where she is, and also stayed present in our lives here with texts and updates. She’ll be back later this week to welcome a visit from her own mom, and the cycles continue. We’re also looking forward to a visit soon from former Rabbits and Ironweeders Stephen and Erica, with their newborn child Julian, whom we’re all impatient to meet!

Cheers to all you readers out there as you ease into summer, thunderstorms, fireflies, and whatever else the warm season may bring you. Hope to see you here at Dancing Rabbit before the summer’s end!

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It has been 16 years since Sara and I took up residence at Dancing Rabbit, and every year I learn again that there is nuance and change within long-term patterns. Certain features of my life, like weekly potlucks with friends and neighbors, groups of interested strangers coming to visit our village for weeks at a time, naming our houses, and cooperative labor, remain the same, but the specific shape those things take does change over time: for instance, redbud and plum are about to burst into bloom as they do each year, but do they always coincide so closely, or was their bloom time influenced by the persistent cold of later winter and early spring?

Ted here to bring you this week’s update from our fair village. One of my favorite daily rituals lately has been to peek at the tawny, spotted rock dove nesting in the far end of the gutter on Tereza’s House, The Haven, which is just a few dozen strides from our front door along a public path running through the area. This is the first time I have witnessed a bird doing this. The thing is, she (the dove) isn’t alone: immediately adjacent to her position, down in the piping of the downspout, there is a pair of starlings scrabbling constantly against the metal, coming and going with nesting materials. We haven’t had any strong precipitation in a week or so… How do I tell them the folly of their plans? I cannot help picturing the inevitable deluge to come in the next hard rain, when a season’s effort might be flushed down the spout in a few minutes of downpour. Or, just possibly, they might hatch out their young during a time with no major rainfall. One way or the other, that dove peeking over the edge of the gutter all day is a member of our neighborhood, and I find myself saying hello each day while wondering at her seemingly imperturbable calm as the starlings come and go right under her nose.

That brings me to water catchment: Sara and I have committed to setting up a new irrigation scheme for our garden this year. For years now on our homestead we have collected rainwater in above-ground tanks as well as in-ground cisterns; by pumping batches of water into elevated tanks, we’ve been able to meet our year-round needs for a low-pressure supply to our buildings and garden with about 4000 gallons of storage capacity. We are installing drip emitters that are meant to work with a low-pressure, gravity-fed water supply (as opposed to a pressurized supply) such as our rain barrels and cubes provide. It feels really wonderful to be able to rely on this year after year, and to have the passive filtration system for drinking water that supplies all our needs. The water just tastes better here than anyplace else, and I appreciate the connection to how things were formerly done. There are still cisterns and root cellars attached to old barns and homesteads here in northeast Missouri, though not so much in use anymore. I think these are resources whose time has come around again.

Bob recently led our first public tour of the year, which benefited from last weekend’s spring land clean and the first signs of green life in the village clearly in evidence. (I hope you’re planning a visit to our village this year!) We’ll have another public tour on Saturday the 27th, starting at 1pm. You might even catch a glimpse of the village’s first cow in the not-too-distant future, if all goes well.

Saturday was the fullest of my recent days. For many years our friends at Sandhill Farm have been the adopt-a-highway sponsors for the several miles of route M that thread between Rutledge and the road crossing to our west toward Memphis. That morning a truck-full of Rabbits, and a couple bicyclists, joined their crew at the start of the route. We peeled off in teams to walk each side of the road collecting trash and items to recycle.

Helping to tidy the highway is usually satisfying enough, but this year we had an end goal of lunch at the Rutledge Fire Department BBQ chicken fundraiser, where village hero and fire chief Javi was making the rounds with other department members and their families. We’re glad to support our local fire department, and excited to hear about their newly acquired vehicles. Though ice cream cones and other desserts featured at the fundraiser, upon our return to the village we had to face a whole new round of ice cream for Javi’s son Max’s ninth birthday.

With energy to spare, the kids drifted off to the trampoline in the Grassroots neighborhood, which seems to be the designated kid hangout lately, while ultimate frisbee players met at our field for a game in the late afternoon. If you are an Ultimate enthusiast living in the area please get in touch! We’d love to find more local players.

New village residents, Avi and Anya, have been making many trips throughout the week back and forth from a far-away pile of mature manure to a garden where they are planting potatoes this season. Their paths crossed mine repeatedly, and I called out encouragement while steeling myself for the same effort soon to come for me. (If they can plant 30 pounds of potatoes, so can I, right?)

Meanwhile, Sara has been spotting out our little seedlings, while I’ve been preparing garden beds. With warm weather coming on soon, more and more wee plants will be headed out into the garden. We’re sprouting sweet potato slips off of the last of 2018’s crop, and I’ve just seen that one of the lemon seeds I brought home from Italy last year is putting on new growth, determined to survive after making it through the winter with a single leaf.

Thankfully I am looking forward to some extra hands in the garden soon. Our first visitor session of the year began on Sunday, and will last for a couple weeks during which time we will introduce these 10 visitors to our village, how we live, and what we’re trying to accomplish. Along with informational sessions about everything from conflict resolution and land use planning to natural building and alternative energy, we also mix in work parties where visitors can join us in garden work, learn hands-on building techniques, and other cooperative tasks that keep the village running.

Soon I will have the chance to spend a couple hours in Ironweed garden introducing our visitors to permaculture-oriented thinking about the gardens and orchards we tend, then get into digging and planting. Hopefully we’ll get lots of our seed potatoes in the ground during the work party, with an eye toward the biggest harvest of locally-grown calories we produce in a year. In the meantime, we’ve been eating the first shiitake mushrooms off of our logs, and I’m slowly relaxing into the warm season despite the rapidly growing to-do list.

Best wishes of spring to all our readers, from your friends here at Dancing Rabbit.

Craving a deep dive into community and sustainability, but can’t take off work for our two-week visitor program? Join us for one of our Ecovillage Experience Weekends, where you can get some firsthand experience of a planet friendly lifestyle. Come be part of the magic of creating a sustainable future.

Wow, a lot happened this week, and I think I’m experiencing a bit of whiplash, though that could be from one of the many slips I have taken in the copious mud created by the recent thaw. Ted here, to share the week’s update from Dancing Rabbit as we run up to the spring equinox.

The nightmare of a cold winter, determined to thoroughly outstay its welcome, turned on a dime to the inevitability of spring. The spring birds all showed up at once. Unlike the past several years, when woodcocks started their “peent!” calls at dusk around my birthday in late February, this year I heard them on nearly the same day that killdeer and robins arrived. Meanwhile, the trio of bald eagles that have graced our local skies all winter are turning their grand circles on decidedly warmer updrafts. Our domesticated birds produced their first baker’s dozen of eggs this week as well — the daily count creeps steadily upward.

I don’t love the extreme mud of the first thaw, especially when combined with heavy rains such as we have had lately. Among other inconveniences, this can mean that some sections of our road, which is nominally graveled, can turn into the most perilous pit of despair for all but our four-wheel-drive truck. I was called to rescue one of our cars, which got stuck in deeply rutted mud on an uphill section of Smith Road while attempting to reach blacktop. Some of our cars don’t have a good point to hitch a tow strap, even if you can get at the undercarriage, and in this case the vehicle was up to its axles, so the only way forward was to nudge it directly from behind, bumper to bumper. I doubted that even the truck could move forward, uphill in the mud against that impediment, but we succeeded in the end.

Ben and Kim have been shuffling buckets full of maple sap back and forth on the path over the past few days. Ever since Alyson gave me a quart as a present during our first winter here in 2003-4, it has been a cherished birthday tradition of mine to drink some maple sap, but that too has been delayed as this has been one of the later years for the sap run. Ben was kind enough to let me steal a glass from one of his buckets (I’m not on the maple team this year), and it was the best thing I have ever tasted, all over again.

Firewood stocking is now fully underway in the village. Kyle led some wood foraging forays to restock supplies for the boiler in the common building, and I pitched in a bit to help with the splitting and stacking efforts, though I am trying to figure out resupply for our home and kitchen as well — we just squeaked by on what I put up last year, along with some older stores. The knot in my neck after that first splitting effort reminded me that I have to work up to the splitting labor, even though I’m tempted to swing for hours right off the bat, it being one of the homesteading tasks I really enjoy.

Troy had a tree service out to bring down a large elm that had long been a fixture over by the Timberframe (so named when it was the first and only such home on farm, in the previous millennium). The tree had been trimmed once before, but was growing ever larger, as trees are wont to do, and blocking solar access for the building as well as reaching a long arm out over Bella Ciao and its solar panels. I was sad to see it go, though it is gratifying to look around and see how much more woodsy the village has become, compared to when I first arrived in 2001. Elm doesn’t split easily, but it is decent firewood, so the more pliant parts of the tree will be put to good use, and Javi took on a lot of the brush for building hügelkultur beds out by the Gil family’s new garden area on Skunk Ridge. Hügelkultur beds, also known as hügelbeets, are raised, untilled planting beds made by burying wood in soil. The wood provides nutrients over time as it breaks down, while also becoming spongy and holding water for many summers to come, for the benefit of cultivated plants.

Thomas has been steadily pruning all the fruit trees around his warren, and also spent some time in the common orchard with Freddi, one of the new recruits to the tree team, which looks after trees in public spaces. That lit a fire under my feet… I have managed to prune my biggest apple tree, but still have to get to the others this coming week. I did at last manage to get our first two trays of seeds planted in the greenhouse, and soon enough we’ll be digging in the garden; it is about time to put in onion starts even though the ground was hard frozen just a week ago.

Dorothy departed midweek for some family time and knee surgery, so I’m coordinating forward progress on her house during her absence. I have also been at work full time building out the porch and starting on the finish floor upstairs, with electrical installations soon to follow. Good’s Construction of Rutledge began in earnest, busily installing the windows, doors and soffits, as well as the fiber cement siding and trim. Ryan, who earlier helped with framing and roofing, also pitched in on the flooring, and Prairie is lined up to help soon.

St. Patrick’s Day, locally known as Bob’s birthday, brought lots of familiar faces to the Mercantile for a tasty supper of corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potatoes, followed by Alline’s extremely decadent chocolate-covered cheesecake. With Guinness and Killian’s in the house, I wasn’t missing anything, and we even managed to get Sara to our sit-down between two all-night midwifery jobs. Thankfully she is now sleeping at home. The Mercantile is one of our favorite places to spend time and enjoy a treat, and if you live within a reasonable distance, you don’t have to wait for a special occasion to come visit us because pizza is served every Thursday from 4PM to 8PM. The desserts alone are worth the drive — last Thursday was March 14th, pi day, so we celebrated π with a variety of pies, including lemon meringue, blueberry custard, chocolate cream and classic pecan.

Curly Sue rounded out the last of this year’s additions to the goat herd with two cute doelings, and Mae pulled the final names out of the hat to complete the baby goat-naming raffle. Sparky christened the blue roan Plevna (which will be accompanied by a number of other honorifics, including Chadwick, in honor of our late Red Earth neighbor Chad’s birthday; we lost Chad this past year). Tereza, down in sunny Texas with Nathan, consulted with Aurelia and came up with Dapple for the thoroughly-spotted babe — that too came with some alternate names, including Jelly-leg in acknowledgement of its woozy first attempts to stand.

Some of the wee goats have not been completely welcomed by their moms, so we have started a rotation of daily visits to the barn to bring some of the moms with surplus milk to the stand to let those little ones get in some nursing time. Aurelia has joined in the effort in my stead. Amazingly, when you rear a child for 12 years, she starts to give back, very capably! She has been doing more and more the past couple years and I’m grateful for her contributions to our family chores.

Frisbee finally appeared on the schedule this week, though the field is recently thawed and will probably be too wet for full play. I can’t remember when I last threw a disc, and I know my legs are out of shape after dusting off my bike to ride over to Sandhill for a pruning session the other day. But I’m extremely excited at the prospect of regular Ultimate games returning to our lives in the near future.

There are a few things (very few) I’m sad to say goodbye to at the end of winter, and the clearest is that with the thaw of the cattail pond, our neighborhood muskrat will likely move out of its temporary home in the culvert under the road in front of my house. It seems to have reached a detente with the cats, as I have seen Wallace and Gromit very near the spot where the muskrat slipped out of sight, entirely unperturbed, as though they had just been playing cards.

I hope the arrival of spring brings you out of winter’s doldrums and into the warm sun, that your seeds germinate and grow happily in the coming weeks, and that the mud doesn’t stick to your feet — unless you like that sort of thing.

The first session in our 2019 visitor program is coming up on April 14th, and you still have a chance to join in. You’ll learn lots of interesting information about our village, how we adjust our lives in many ways to live more sustainably, as well as how we govern our community. There will also be tons of fun, projects to participate in, delicious organic food, opportunities for personal growth and possibilities for new connections with wonderful people. Don’t wait too long to sign up, because slots can fill up fast, and you don’t want to miss out.

A new baby boy was born to Burl and Troy during the recent full moon eclipse at Dancing Rabbit, before the moon had reemerged from Earth’s shadow. I struggle to credit that it was just a week past. Perhaps it is the innumerable snowflakes that have fallen since (seemingly every day) blurring my recall, but a week past seems a very long time ago.

Ted here with an update from our fair ecovillage in northeast Missouri, which lies under a steady blanket of white. I’ve been playing one of my favorite games: observing the flow of people-traffic around my home. After each dawn that comes with a new coating of snow, our paths are reestablished by the repeated passage of booted feet over the course of the day. Heavily used paths are well trod by midday, while the lesser-used ones might just have one set of deep footprints peeling off toward a personal shed or a wood pile, only to get dusted over again and left unused for days. I like to get out first thing in the morning in my standard uniform of insulated jacket, bibs, and boots, to shuffle my feet along, clearing and compacting the new accumulation around my homestead to make every subsequent trip easier. (Shoveling just doesn’t seem worthwhile, most of the time.) After breakfast, it’s time to climb my ladder with my long-poled brush and clear our solar panels in this snowiest winter in recent memory.

Wind power has been a wonderful asset through some of the grey days of late, but we got a boost in solar power as well this week, because I finally completed the reset protocol on one of our charge controllers, (a device that limits the rate at which electricity is added to or drawn from our battery bank). I imagined that I had zapped its logic board during the installation of our new battery bank, as it had been nonfunctional since then, but when I completed the process it came back online. The sun came out as well and all of a sudden we were running a space heater for hours at a go, and pulling out our electronic kitchen devices to make use of the surplus juice. Knowing that we can get along adequately for two months without the bigger half of our usual array confirmed my hunch that with all of it producing, and the wind power thrown in, we would be net-positive on an ongoing basis, and have a fair amount of power to sell. The next step is to settle on a new inverter (a component that changes DC current to AC) and bury the wire connecting our system to the local power grid, so we can start exporting the surplus. Meanwhile, electric space heating is a nice perk, as well as a discount on the firewood, carbon cost, and fire-tending labor we otherwise deal with.

Our friend Alyson — former Rabbit, founder and member of Red Earth Farms, village baker, facilitator, and fellow parent, among other roles — turned 50 this past weekend, and we got to celebrate here in the neighborhood. She asked for a dance party, as well as lounging and massage, with some times in which kids could be present and some not.

Andrea rose to the challenge and made her debut as a DJ. She put together a playlist days ahead of time, set up Casa for the event, and gathered volunteers to help in various ways (I provided popcorn flavored with just butter and salt, the way Alyson likes it). Andrea even imported some fabulous and flamboyant clothes from a thrift shop in Edina, where she works as a paramedic, so there were shimmery fabrics and untold numbers of sequins flashing all night in time to the music. Javi put on a movie for the kids, so the adult portion of the evening was surprisingly uninterrupted. It went off beautifully, all the planned elements coming together for one of the better dance parties in recent memory. Happy birthday, neighbor!

That was not all that happened on Saturday. Earlier in the day somebody missed the edge of the road under the drifted snow, while driving our truck to the nearby town of Rutledge, and lodged the right side wheels in the ditch. Insulated by the thick snow, the mud at the base of the ditch was surprisingly pliant and slick, despite several previous frigid nights. Javi, Nathan, Loren, and my daughter Aurelia and I went at it for a couple hours with shovels, gravel, the tractor and a tow strap. We made slow progress, until a kindly neighbor happened by and offered to help. He managed to extract our truck in under five minutes, using the greater weight and traction of his vehicle. That left just enough time for Aurelia and I to hop in a car and join in the tailend of games being played at Stan and Gigi’s place in Memphis. Full day!

The snow fort Prairie and I helped build still stands, though it looks a little more like a ruined castle after a rainy day earlier in the week brought its loftiest heights tumbling down. Refreezing has left the respectable remainder iced over and quite resilient, and I’ve enjoyed going out to observe the muskrat tracks that gambol all around it between the edge of the pond and the snow-mounded hummocks of weeds where they take shelter.

And the barn! I must say I had my doubts, despite Mae’s determination that we would get the goats in there for the winter, but the weather cooperated just enough through early January that we managed to get the roof on and the big doors closed up. Mae built a new feeder for it while I put in the stairs. I’m a little at loose ends now without steady work to focus on, so I go out there some days to test the stairs. I like to rest in the (satisfactorily) dry and sheltered loft, smell the drifting sweetness of hay and goats, and stand on the upstairs deck to enjoy a commanding view of the sunset over our western slope.

One of the things I appreciate about the life I’ve built here is the connection between my participation in devising and constructing a building, water system or power system, and direct feedback on the success of my work when the extremes of weather visit us through the seasons. Certainly there are lessons learned along the way and incorporated into the next project. Perhaps that is the nature of wisdom: layered on like snow through the experience of each year we continue to have the privileges of breath and life.

I look forward to many a warmer evening in spring and watching many a sunset from that barn deck, and I hope that you might come for a visit, so that I can share them with you. Stay warm out there, my friends!

Are your tracks leading you to Dancing Rabbit? If so, now is a great time to sign up for our visitor program, while the opportunity lasts. While you’re here, you might get a chance to meet Ted, Mae and some of the goats they’ve been working so hard to get under shelter. You’ll also get to sit in on a variety of interesting workshops about topics related to sustainability, including renewable energy sources such as the solar panels and wind turbines that Ted mentioned. There will be plenty of excellent homemade food, drowsy sunsets, and perhaps some layering of wisdom.

As long as we have kept chickens — which our oldest Speckled Sussex hen, Rose, tells me is something like nine years now — I have noticed that within a few days of the winter solstice, egg production starts to rebound. Laying is influenced by light exposure, and it only takes a few minutes shift in day length for the hens to respond. Ted here to bring you the final column of 2018 from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, as our days have started to grow longer again.

I recently returned from three weeks away in Virginia with family, and could not help noticing a familiar sense of relief; mostly it comes in the form of knowing a lot more about the food I’m eating, and being able to adhere to different, more familiar social standards. (Dark secret: I am a plate-licker, because it makes the washing easier; and if the food was good, why waste any of it?). Home is here as I work on my 16th year in Northeast Missouri.

My return also landed in the few days running up to the winter solstice, which some of us, my family included, tend to celebrate instead of Christmas. Solstice morning we opened presents together. My natal family learned years ago that that is our way, and sent presents home with me. They also know I’m a foodie, so among other gifts I had some tasty snacks to keep me going on the road as well as a new slate cheese board, complete with slate cheese signs to label in chalk, to stick in different cheeses when I offer them at a potlucks or other gatherings. Thanks for your generosity, friends!

Among other events this week, Danielle offered a day-long workshop on breathwork during the shortest day of the year, with more than a dozen in attendance. All of the participants I saw afterward certainly seemed bright and well-oxygenated. Some shared the artwork inspired by their experience.

On the evening of the solstice there was a gathering in la Casa, one of our shared village spaces used for business meetings and social events, where lots of us came together for rhythm, art, lounging, laughter, singing, and a sleepover. My partner Sara opened things with a reading of a book called The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer and Jesse Reisch, describing the history of solstice celebrations in various cultures around the world, which we read each year to our daughter Aurelia when she was a wee child, and which still helps to broaden understanding for those who didn’t grow up knowing the significance of the winter solstice.

Jason, one of our newer residents, brought his drum kit — complete with a 50s-era hard suitcase to use as a bass drum. Baigz from Sandhill, one of our neighboring intentional communities, rounded up all the available hand drums from our common building and brought them over as well. Jason built up a sweat while he kept up a steady, ever-shifting rhythm without cease for two hours or more as various folks dropped in and out along the way with other percussion. Some danced along, and toward the end a group of folks added some amazing vocal improvisation. The silence after that sound meditation was stunning! Sleeping bags were brought out and wrapped around those staying for the sleepover, while the rest of us bundled up and trickled out toward home under a lovely, haloed full moon.

Next morning a handful of us gathered again at dawn out near the playing field, which is the highest point of land in the village area, to witness and welcome the sun’s return above the horizon after the longest night of the year. Hoar frost had coated every possible surface in the night, and the sun lit up a sparkling galaxy of living light as it arose over our gentle eastern slope. Rosy, smiling cheeks and some brief singing and ululation ensued before we each wandered off to our respective days, now lengthening again.

None of this is to suggest I’m closed to Christmas or other holiday celebrations — who can pass up Thistledown’s annual Christmas Eve cookies-and-cider soiree, or the Christmas morning potluck brunch at the Mercantile? Kyle also announced a Boxing Day bash at his home, the Gnestle, along with dancing at the Casa for the night after Christmas. We even have more presents to open at our house thanks to Sara’s parents, who visited to share their joy of the holiday with us before heading off to celebrate with other family members elsewhere. The more holidays, the better, I say!

Most of the spare time in these short but comparatively mild days since my return has gone into work on the goat barn, where Mae had been doggedly toiling at putting up siding and adding some windows in my absence. We worked together for a few days as I got back on the task of attaching purlins to the rafters, moving closer and closer to adding the roofing itself, which had arrived shortly after I departed for my trip. If the weather holds up, and we get enough low-wind days to allow it, we ought to have the goats under better shelter within a week or two.

Now from the many-hands-make-light-work department: despite having called a work party for Monday morning to get new plastic sheeting on his newly-erected hoop house down in the lower barn yard, Ben ended up getting it done Sunday evening, and so cancelled for the following morning. But those seeking a group work event won’t be disappointed — I’m shortly heading out to the latest wall-raising event out at Dorothy’s house on Skunk Ridge, where Bear is leading a late-season charge to frame up Dancing Rabbit’s newest home. Update: the latest wall was successfully raised. The space takes shape… It has been fun to hear two crews at construction work not far from each other, while at the barn lately.

One of 2018’s new residents, who goes by T in order to avoid being confused with the other Troy in our village, noted the value of a good rideshare, and how we conserve fuel and other resources here. (T is a regular contributor to our weekly column, and you can read lots of his hilarious work at his blog.) He rode with Kurt for the weekly Rutledge-and-Memphis trip he has done like clockwork, with rare exception, for many years now. He is always open to doing errands, drop-offs, and pickups for others while he’s out there, and this week T recorded that the trip included 21 discrete errands performed at 13 discrete stops in a little over three hours. Wow! Thanks for being one of the village anchors, Uncle Kurt.

Though it is several weeks past now, I want to share the result of a talk I gave out in Virginia in late November to the Fredericksburg Torch Club, which gathers monthly to sup together and hear a talk on one subject or another. I titled the talk “Climate Change and the Power of Community”, and covered a brief survey of the ecological state of things in the world as detailed by the latest UN and US climate reports, as well as what we’re doing here at Dancing Rabbit, and my belief that joining in various forms of community is one of the most powerful tools we have to face the challenge of climate change. The event went well, with an engaged audience that included some local high school students and questions that filled all the available time.

I had only barely made it to the talk in time, my train trip having been extended by an early-season Midwest blizzard. Unseasonal events do happen, but they are happening with ever greater frequency and intensity, impacting more and more people and places with each passing year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the hottest years on record have all happened in the past 20 years, with all but two in the past 10. I believe we must alter our collective behavior and learn how to live happily (and bountifully!) with less, especially here in the US where the average citizen has as much as 30 times the impact of someone living in the developing world. The future appears more dim the longer we wait to reduce our impacts.

Dancing Rabbit’s work in the world is to demonstrate one sustainable alternative to the current norm. As we head into the new year, we hope you’ll keep in touch and start thinking about visiting us in 2019 — now is a great time to apply for our Sustainable Living Visitor Program, before all of the available slots have been taken. You can check out the schedule and send in your application at our website. It’s also not too late to make a charitable donation to our educational nonprofit for 2018, if you feel moved by the holiday spirit to help support our efforts toward a more sustainable and cooperative culture.

Happy Sun Return to all our friends out there! And may all your celebrations be warm and in good company.