The March Hare: The Dancing Rabbit Weekly Blog

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. Folks from the tri-communities of Dancing Rabbit, Sand Hill and Red Earth Farms gathered to celebrate Alyson's 50th birthday and dance the night away. Ted here with an update from our fair ecovillage in northeast Missouri,…read more >

Since I moved to Missouri from California almost two years ago, I have had a tendency to look back and compare my experiences with each turn of the season. Whenever I can recall a memory of Dancing Rabbit instead of California, things feel a little easier. Liz here, with an update on the new year from Dancing Rabbit. Liz's proposed permaculture project site, with her friend the silver maple tree, and a view of Dancing Rabbit's Old Pond Last winter I traveled back to California three times for various reasons and it was hard being split between two homes. While…read more >

Ted putting some finishing touches on the purlins of the new barn in preparation for roofing.  Howdy y'all. Ben here, your favorite manure-encrusted freelance writer (emphasis on the free), bringing the latest news from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in cold, dreary Northeast Missouri. I'm encrusted in manure for a few reasons. One is that my work area this afternoon is a somewhat rare combination of icy yet muddy conditions; it’s like scrabbling over frozen chunks of waterlogged earth frosted in a thin veil of poultry leavings, which have been warmed over by a balmy sun. It has a consistency similar to…read more >

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. The smiling faces of some who gathered to greet the returning sun on the…read more >

I have started to wonder how holidays differ for fellow Rabbits from the holidays we grew up with or left behind in our lives before Dancing Rabbit. “T” here, as I approach my first holiday season at DR. All ready for holiday celebrations at the Milkweed Mercantile My family celebrates Christmas. As a little kid, that meant a trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s or Bonnie and Bill’s for a couple days with all the relatives.  We almost always attended a Christmas Eve church service and sang traditional songs and hymns like “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” and “Little Drummer Boy”…read more >

Prairie and her view from Woodhenge Fear. It is a tangible feeling. It tells the birds to take flight when creatures near their perches. It encourages the crayfish (or crawdads) to take a pinch at unassuming, soft human limbs intruding upon their humble homes. It is a survival mechanism running through all living things. Just as bringing the same-charged sides of magnets together creates a kind of tension that prevents contact between them, so, too, does fear faced with an unfamiliar obstacle. Often, caught in the center of that tension we only try to escape: we run. The first humans…read more >