Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

Signs of fall: A Dancing Rabbit Update

The Webmaster — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:34:11 +0000

The last few weeks here have felt marked by a combination of frenzy and fatigue. The program season is rushing toward its conclusion, bringing with it a flurry of activity, while the weather and our energy levels have finally begun to cool. The running joke is “it’s finally fall!”, although we have a ways to go until the equinox.

In some ways, though, it still feels very much like summer. The humidity remains high, flowers are still blooming, and the community garden is flush with beans, cucumbers, eggplants, potatoes, greens, and well, the tomatoes have been notably absent. Victims, we suspect, of the thieving raccoons who have apparently decided that our garden is their personal buffet.

By the way, this is Keith. I’ve lived in the village for two years and just officially became a member of Dancing Rabbit. I live here with my small family unit and do remote work in the behavioral health field on top of my various engagements with the community here. This is my first attempt at writing one of these newsletters.

The last two weekends marked the completion of the Cob Oven Workshop and Singing Rabbit, our community’s singing festival. I had a chance to chat briefly with some of the attendees of the Cob Oven Workshop, who appeared to be having a thoroughly good and very muddy time helping to build the new cob oven for Critter Kitchen. It is very satisfying to watch friends and guests transform simple materials into something tangible that will serve many for years to come.

Next up is our final visitor program of the season and the Ecovillage Weekend Experience (where visitors come for a long weekend and an abbreviated version of the visitor program). From mine and many others’ perspectives, this program season has so far been a success. I’m personally grateful for the opportunity to co-facilitate our Conflict and Communication workshops. It’s always a joy to talk with others about how communication and conflict take shape within the village, and each workshop gives us another opportunity to learn about the challenges people encounter.

As I’ve been planning and writing this newsletter, I’ve found myself reflecting on my perspective and relationship to the community. I have something of a unique situation as a member of Dancing Rabbit. I participate in village life: serving on committees, engaging in social activities, helping with the community garden, doing chores, and attending council meetings. However, I also work a traditional full-time job from my home office.

I have to be mindful of how I spend my time because the hours I have outside of work and caring for my family are limited. I often fear missing out. There is always something happening here, and when I know a gathering, project, conversation, or spontaneous adventure is unfolding just beyond my cob and plaster walls, it can be difficult not to wonder what I’m missing.

However, that limited time has given me a deeper appreciation for the life happening around me. I can often hear laughter, see people coming and going, or know that I’m missing a meeting or shared activity I’d rather be engaged in than doing my work. This makes the opportunities I do have to step away from my desk and engage with the community feel especially meaningful.

Even from my home office I’m noticing that as the season winds down, the rhythm of the village is changing again. The intensity of summer programs is giving way to a quieter season. There is still plenty happening, but there is also the promise of more breathing room with more lingering conversations, slower afternoons, and time to reconnect without quite so much urgency.

I’m particularly looking forward to fall this year: sweaters and flannel, fewer mosquitoes and ticks, and, most importantly, friends and family being a little less busy. There is something lovely about that seasonal shift. The world seems to exhale a little, and we get the opportunity to do the same.

After months of heat, activity, travel, workshops, gardens, meetings, muddy construction projects, and the general whirlwind of village life, I think I’m ready for that exhale.

Keith Wilder has joined our writer’s rotation for this publication. Welcome Keith!

The post Signs of fall: A Dancing Rabbit Update first appeared on Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

Singin’ in the Rain: A Dancing Rabbit Update

The Webmaster — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:37:19 +0000

Here at DR a storm has just passed, leaving behind the hum of late summer crickets, the tapping of water droplets as they fall from leaf to leaf, and tentative bouts of birdsong in the forest canopy above me. A hearty plop emanates from my neighbor’s rain barrel as big drips of water release from the gutter into the now-brimming drum. The land feels drowsy and full.

It has been an August of storms, roaring in from the west, laying billowing sheets of rain across the prairie, making deep, clear puddles that delight the kids endlessly. The storms bring life and destruction, ripening the eggplants and peppers to glossy plumpness, while also strewing branches of fruit trees and maples haphazardly across the paths. Turbulence and resolution, potential and risk, new growth and demolition–all are encompassed in the wild Midwestern storms that both nourish and batter our community in the summer months.

In this season we have also faced some emotional storm systems as we grapple with big questions, including those of community membership, village council leadership, and the stewardship of our collective agreements. Topics like these, which dig deep into our individual sense of security and belonging, generate their own social weather–inner and interpersonal storms which buffet through our bodies, hearts, and minds before eventually blowing into the eastern horizon. They leave behind their own broken branches, as well as those reserves of water that come from facing hard things together and making it to the other side.

After four years living in community I have come to see moments of emotional turbulence and conflict as natural parts of the human ecosystem, arising out of social winds and pressure systems that are beyond any one person’s control. Often, we do not need to run from the storm, but rather, make sure our house is in order and we have pulled in the laundry.

August has also brought moments of excitement and change. Having declared July our “summer break” from hosting workshops and visitors, many of us returned from travels this month, and the kitchen co-op I eat with went from being a skeleton crew to operating at full capacity in a sweep of joyful reunions. We said bittersweet goodbyes to some beloved community kids as they made their way off to college, and said hello to a new collaborative school for the younger kids organized by several parents and community members. We hosted a really lovely group of participants in our first Ecovillage Experience Weekend of the season, as well as a large group of freshmen from Earlham College.

Looking forward, Alis is working hard to get the base ready for the new cob oven that will be built in Critter Kitchen next weekend and I am putting my time and energy toward prepping for Singing Rabbit, our community singing festival at the end of the month. I often get really stressed out planning gatheringings like this, but as a wonderful team of song leaders and space holders have coalesced around the event I have slowly let go into enjoying the process and starting to build my own excitement around creating beauty with my friends. All is ripening, the moon is waxing, soon we will teeter into fall.

Upcoming Programs:

August 28-30: Singing Rabbit (10 spots left) *Registration closes 8/25

Emeshe Amade is Co-Executive Director of DR’s nonprofit, the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture. She is a regular contributing writer for this publication.

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Sometimes Worth the Effort: A Dancing Rabbit Update

Connie Tao — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:46:06 +0000

This morning was the work party in the community garden, and similar to Emeshe, I often have a lot of deep thoughts while I’m working outside. I enjoy tackling village problems and working through big questions while I am busy pulling grass, looking for cucumber beetles, or harvesting basil tops.

Christina here, writing about effort, cynicism, and why I don’t like to grow carrots.

As it often does, the conversation this morning eventually went to the fencing issue. We have deer and rabbits that get in the garden and really demolish certain crops every chance they get. In the past we’re tried all sorts of methods to keep them out: adding chicken wire to the fence, tying string high over the fence, adding a string of electric wire around the perimeter, and even spraying a mixture of hot sauce and soap on the bean plants.

Eventually, the animals figured out a way to get what they wanted, and once they had access, they’d just mow down the crop they were after. Side note to animals: Are those sweet potato greens and bean leaves really worth all that effort when you have a whole forest right there??

So this year, we’ve given up in a few ways. We didn’t plant any sweet potatoes down in the community garden, and for the beans we have settled on a small bean cage, sort of like a fence within the fence, that seems to mostly work.

When I was a teacher, I learned fairly quickly that I could put in 100 percent and get about 90 percent from my students or I could put in 60 percent effort and get about 80 percent from them. Learning how to not burn myself out while still getting at least some of the outcome that I want has definitely been a lifelong struggle. And like so many things in life, trying to garden has been a great way to, um, re-relearn those valuable lessons.

I’m personally not a huge fan of beans, so it’s not such a tragedy for me; it seems like an easy way to give up that 40 percent.

The beans-and-sweet-potato issue also brings up the question of how much to be the garden grinch. I can be very cynical about growing food around here! I’ve been gardening in Northeast Missouri on and off for about 10 years, and between the bugs and the clay soil, there are some things that to me don’t seem to be worth the work–especially if I can get them easily at the store. So I’d personally pass on growing carrots, cabbage, onions, and watermelon.

But what if someone in the community garden is really passionate about growing something on that list? Do I try to tell them all the ways that I tried and failed to keep the borer worms off the zucchini? Do I try to convince them that the onions will probably be small, or they’ll bolt, or they’ll rot in a few weeks anyway? Or do I just let them put in the time and effort and see if they can prove me wrong?

I’ve found myself asking this same question with so many other endeavors that I have attempted and found mixed success with in the village. Whether the topic is homeschool co-ops, making money at pizza nights, or houses built with almost zero natural materials, I am rarely at a loss for an opinion. But when should I share that opinion, in the hopes that others learn from my mistakes? And when should I just let them try for themselves–and maybe prove me wrong? Last year we had an amazing onion crop, and the year before that, we grew some of the most delicious carrots I’ve ever tasted. And maybe the current crop of parents of young children will pull off a homeschool co-op after all.

I’ve settled on a philosophy of trying to keep my mouth shut more than I want to, which is probably a happy medium where I still say more than I should, but less than I otherwise would.

Ultimately, I don’t really expect to find answers to many questions in life–from beans to homeschool to building materials–but I do really enjoy spending time in the Down Below Community Garden, talking with friends new and old about big ideas and trivial stuff.

And if anyone is really excited about planting fall carrots, I promise to help weed and water them, even if I’m skeptical they’ll make it.

Christina Lovdal Gil is a regular contributing writer to this publication. She has lived with her family at Dancing Rabbit for 10 years.

The post Sometimes Worth the Effort: A Dancing Rabbit Update first appeared on Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

Come sing your heart out at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage!

Connie Tao — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:30:55 +0000

Gather ‘round–we need you grounded
Calling our cousins into spaces we have woven
Bring the frayed ends of your fears, you are welcome here
We are not afraid of your light or your darkness, bring it

These are lyrics from a melody written and composed by song leader Biz (I wish I could be certain of their last name), from one of my favorite songs of all time. It is a call to step forward with the full spectrum of our wisdom and also the fearful prejudices that we carry. It is a gentle and courageous call, and one that I am now extending to you.

One of my favorite things about Singing Rabbit is that there is always a seat around the fire for everyone. Whether it is your first or your fifth time, you have a place here. No voice is too small or shy or inexperienced. I sing off-key all the time, especially when I try to catch an elusive harmony just out of my vocal range. I often forget lyrics to songs that I’ve been singing for years–right before it’s my turn to choose a song for the group to sing! I’ll mumble a few words, struggle through a snippet of melody, then suddenly, someone else in the circle remembers the rest, and with a collective breath, the song comes through.

It is in those moments of convergence that I am reminded of our capacity to build a culture that holds one another. In a song circle, the individual becomes a note in our collective chorus. I love to sing, but I rarely enjoy singing alone because my throat knows what it is to meet another in this act of vocal devotion.

Folks who know me well have heard me say that song circle is my church. Although community singing is not inherently religious, for me it is undeniably spiritual in the spontaneous connection I feel with myself, our planet, and people I know deeply–as well as people I may not even know the names of. When I sing with others, I am awestruck by the strength and beauty of our differences, similarities, and ultimately our interdependence. We don’t have to all agree on everything in order to share space with one another in a meaningful way. What we each carry into the circle only adds to the container we are building together. There is room for your grief, rage, regret, joy, sorrow, curiosity, ecstacy, playfulness, confusion, exuberance, and love. During some circles, I find myself spilling over with laughter. In other moments, silent tears stream down my face. No matter the emotion, I know that I am welcome; so are you.

Since I was a child, I have longed for a culture that fostered closeness, trust, and belonging amongst its people. When I moved to Dancing Rabbit with my family as a young teen and started attending group singing events locally and beyond, I finally experienced those pieces that had been missing in my youth. Starting at age 14, I witnessed deep emotional connection between strangers at singing events across the Midwest. I watched people who had never shared their singing voices with another soul open up for the first time. I started writing and teaching my own songs. I found instant, forever family through simply sharing my voice with others. I was so moved by what I experienced that I found myself saying yes over and over to help make events like Singing Rabbit possible, from taking on the responsibility of infrastructure leader at age 16 to finally leading my own song circle at age 21.

When traveling, I have a little propane single burner stove, and it’s wonderfully convenient. Unless I’m out of propane. So if I had to choose one cooking method, I’d leave the stove at home and pack the hatchet. I can’t think of many places where you can buy propane that you can’t find firewood, and all it takes is a couple of small branches to fry some potatoes. Many folks at Dancing Rabbit cook with gas (and electric), but I eat with the Critter Kitchen. We cook exclusively with fire (well, and sun). We can feed 10-15 mouths on two square meals a day on offcuts from construction projects, complemented by free scrap wood from the local furniture shop. It takes longer to cook (at least until you’re good with it), but it’s a great way to feed yourself. So long as you don’t mind the soot on your clothes–but hey, it’s a great way to hide the dirt.

These days I’m not much of a leader or a follower. I prefer to linger along the spectrum in between, which lends itself so well to group singing; even if I inhabit the role of song leader, what follows is always a co-creation with whomever is gathered. My dedication to song has never been a solo endeavor because I know that whatever melody emerges through the cracks in my life can become a part of something bigger that I will one day weave with others. I hope you will join me in this weaving of songs at Singing Rabbit, August 28-30 at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

I never know what exactly is going to transpire here between all of our voices, but that is what excites me the most: this mysterious force that brings the right people together at the right time, called by the mystique of melody, led by that which leads all of us toward deeper connection with ourselves, our planet, and our animal and human neighbors near and far. We will be singing, of course, and probably dancing. Also eating great food. Oh, and smiling and laughing a lot. So, you should come. Take your seat in the circle. Bring all that lives inside of you. I will do the same. See you soon.

Prairie Johnson has been singing in song circles since she was 14 and writing songs since age 11. She has led songs for community singing events Village Fire and Singing Rabbit, parties, events, workshops, and the other myriad cracks in Earth’s corners that only songs can fill. She attended Dancing Rabbit’s weekly song circle from 2017-2023 where she got her first taste of song leading in community. Prairie is a spoken-word poet, writer, pianist, avid reader, lover of food, bare feet on the Terra, biking, cooking, and the enlivening love-mess-nest of authentic connection with humans.

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Heat and Harvest: A Dancing Rabbit Update

Connie Tao — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:27:29 +0000

Dew is dripping off tomato vines, plaster is getting smeared on sun soaked walls, and everyone is a little grumpy. Yup. It’s high summer in the ecovillage, and despite rampant sweatyness, itchiness, and brain fog, we are continuing to work together on our collective projects–ideally indoors or between the hours of six and 10 in the morning.

Emeshe here, with a Dancing Rabbit update.

One thing I feel proud of this year is our community garden, which we have started to colloquially call the Down Below Garden because it sits towards the bottom of a long, sloping hill. Its location allows us to use the gray water from the showers, sinks, and washing machine in our common building to water the plants. Gravity draws the water down into a constructed wetland that empties into a vibrant green pond ever-ringed by croaking frogs this time of year. In the spring, an intrepid gardener wades into this pond and siphons the hose so water can flow even further downhill to the garden, hopefully without getting a mouth full of pond slime in the process. This system allows us to reuse water to grow food, which I think is pretty cool. It also means we need to be really careful about what soaps and shampoos we use so we can maintain a balanced ecosystem and not introduce anything we don’t want into the soil.

I’m very much a beginner gardener myself, so it’s incredibly humbling and gratifying to get to learn from the more experienced people around me. Organic gardening takes a lot of care and attention to detail. It also takes knowing the natural environment deeply and being able to shift methods creatively as different years present us with different problems. For example, this year is bringing us a bumper crop of flea beetles which simply delight in consuming the tender leaves of the eggplant. The solution we came up with when the plants were young was a combination of mesh row cover, regular dusting with diatomaceous earth, and giving the plants a morning pat down with tape–a process which made me feel both morose and also quite satisfied. Many flea beetles met a sorry fate by my hand, stuck to our trusty roll of blue duct tape, with a little prayer that they find peace in whatever form they take next.

A community garden isn’t just about tending plants, however. It is in large part about tending and nurturing human relationships. Just as organic gardening takes adaptability, flexibility, and a willingness to roll with the punches, so does organic group organizing. Working with other people requires a solid amount of surrender, particularly if it’s in an anarchic setting where nobody is officially in charge. This method requires good communication, a commitment to show up for your friends, a certain detachment from control, and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness to give people a little grace and gratitude even when they planted okra in the bed you were saving for squash.

The degree to which I micromanage and try to push for specific outcomes has definitely decreased since I moved to community. Trying to impose what I think is right on the multifaceted and ever-evolving fabric of group life just tires me out and rarely achieves the best end result. Instead, what I’ve found works for me is an orientation towards listening, engaging with curiosity, and a commitment to process over product. In the garden, and in all things, people’s energy, availability, and inspiration comes in waves and I find that riding those waves gets me a lot farther than trying to swim upstream and force a work party on a day when people are busy, uninspired, or just plain hot.

Overall, this organic method seems to work for our gardening cohort, although it can produce unexpected results. Things are definitely not planted where we said they were going to go on the garden map we crafted in March, but there are abundant potatoes to harvest for lunch, plenty of kale to share, and the promise of almost infinite tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumber on the horizon, so I am happy to keep showing up and letting things unfold.

Emeshe Amade is Co-Executive Director of DR’s nonprofit, the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture. She is a regular contributing writer for this publication.

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Fun With Mud: A Natural Building Workshop at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

The Webmaster — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 23:46:54 +0000

Editor’s note: Guest writer Justin writes of his experience in a natural building workshop in 2023.

When I discovered that Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage offers a natural building workshop, I was thoroughly captivated. I’m deeply interested in sustainable architecture as an artistic medium, enabling marginalized populations to achieve abundant lifestyles with deep, reciprocal connections to the land and community.

So–a workshop promising exposure to a wide range of inexpensive, accessible, natural materials and processes? Sign me up! Plus, I’ve had stars in my eyes looking at DR for over a decade. The spiritual alienation, environmental degradation, economic exploitation and social atomization of Western capitalist culture has left me hungry for an alternative. And here’s a community of folks doing their best to embody a healthy, inclusive, sustainable alternative close to home. This is great! We can save the world with this stuff! I’ll admit, my expectations for the workshop were pretty high.

As promised, the workshop offered hands-on experience with earth bag foundations, straw bale walls, and cob building. This may seem like a lot of technical ground to cover in five days. But a little guided practice goes a long way in 1) replacing the overwhelm in confronting a new building process with a sense of empowerment, and 2) demonstrating a range of beautiful projects using these skills with tangible applications in the community.

We opened ourselves to what’s possible using these processes, rather than attaining technical mastery. This workshop could be thought of as an entry point; an invitation to practice skills we can perfect in our own communities, a gateway to knowledge we can continue to research on our own terms.

To that end, our hands-on experience was supplemented with guided tours showcasing built environments demonstrating a surprisingly wide range of applications for green building in both Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms communities. There is freedom here to treat building projects not as commercial products that must function in a prescribed manner forever, but instead as laboratories for innovation, with space for continual repurposing to meet the evolving needs of a dynamic community. And not all of these experiments have worked as planned.

Being shown what has and hasn’t endured in up to 25 years of Midwest humidity and weather, and having frank discussions about evolving strategies to fine-tune building science to better achieve design goals, was invaluable in advancing my understanding of natural building. Being given permission to try new things, to fail, and encouragement to try again was tremendously empowering.

And to top it off, we benefited from the widely varied perspectives, experience and design sensibilities of three different instructors, each of whom I came to respect personally, as educators and as creative individuals.

This brings me to an unexpected value of this workshop that has me keen to write this testimonial for you. I experienced real and profound intimacy from my experience that I’ve come to realize is sorely lacking in my life outside DR, in the larger world. Again, this may seem like a tall order for a five-day experience. But our instructors, and perhaps our specific group of workshop participants, demonstrated deep commitment to creating a safe space for sharing.

Part of this was by design, and reinforced by our daily schedule. Every morning, we were invited to share our physical, emotional and intellectual selves taking turns in a circle, before again taking turns leading group stretches as equals. One of our three incredible instructors even volunteered her time at morning coffee to provide an opportunity for anyone interested to come and ask questions about the community or about natural building before getting started with all of that each morning.

We shared excellent home-cooked meals, many of which evolved into essential venues for decompression, externalizing our shared experience in the workshops, and good-natured debate spiced with plenty of jokes and just having fun together. And, of course, there’s something alchemical about the bonds of fellowship shared by people mixing clay, sand and straw together with their bare feet.

I have never allowed myself such a high degree of vulnerability, nor shared so much of my ideas and feelings with perfect strangers, in such a short amount of time. I should reassure you that your degree of social engagement is up to you. As an easily overstimulated person myself, this is an important point: the instructors respected our limits and our boundaries as a foundational aspect of creating that safe space I enjoyed. I came to see the social engagements built into the workshop as invitations to connect and grow together, rather than prescriptive obligations.

I should also mention that not everyone is perfect, and mistakes were made in the pursuit of fostering an inclusive environment and the celebration of diversity that this community aspires to. But as our conflicts played out, I became convinced that the individuals involved really care and are committed to doing the work of getting better in a way that makes me love this community all the more. I’m sorry not to be able to give the specificity that I value in compelling testimonials here, but I also want to do my best to respect individual privacy and autonomy.

As my first in-person encounter with intentional community, the Natural Building Workshop was a window I could look through to see how this remarkable village works through periods of growth and of conflict. And though I suspect that other programs offered by DR (the visitor program and work exchange, for example) are designed to provide a more intentional and complete picture of community life here, there is tremendous value in uncurated experience. It’s what the community shows in its actions that speak loudest about its lived ideals.

Dancing Rabbit has shown itself to be a very public-facing ecovillage with a host of outreach programs belying its small size. And I can tell you that, although it’s always a work in progress, the project of cultivating inclusive, non-exploitative relationships here and sharing these with the wider world is real.

Are you interested in a retreat that offers hands-on experience? If you’re adventurous enough to sign up and get there, courageous enough to give of yourself to the people you meet there, and if you approach the experiment of living in an ecovillage with an open mind, you might open yourself up to some invaluable personal growth, as I did.

I feel empowered to pursue healthier relationships in my community and personal life. And I feel inspired to continue my journey with natural building, too. I’m grateful to the community that made this experience for me possible, and I can’t recommend their Natural Building Workshop enough. It is no overstatement to say it has been one of the most transformative and inspiring adventures of my life so far.

Upcoming DR Events

Ecovillage weekends: 8/7-10 and 10/16-19

Cob oven workshop: 8/21-23

Singing Rabbit: 8/28-30

Visitor program: 9/13-27

Justin Rulo-Sabé holds a BFA in Art History and Interdisciplinary Arts. He taught himself to rebuild old houses, and he rents and manages affordable apartments. He has also designed and built structures for Missouri Botanical Garden and Earthdance Farms. He is a full-time wage laborer, and also works as a handyman. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, writing, woodworking and printmaking.

The post Fun With Mud: A Natural Building Workshop at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage first appeared on Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

A Home for Fire

The Webmaster — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:04:10 +0000

When I’m teaching a natural building workshop, folks sometimes ask me, “What’s the best way to build?”

It’s a good question, but a big one, and one that often opens more questions than it provides answers. Are we building for warmth in a cold climate? For protection against bears (or worse, nosy neighbors)? For congregating, with acoustics and dance surfaces considered? For play (even a sandbox benefits from a container)? But perhaps the biggest question: for whom are we building? Natural building excels at customization, and my house will look different than your house.

If we are to build a good home, let us first consider the creature we seek to foster. I’m leading a natural building workshop this August, but we will not build a home for me, nor for you, nor for any of the membership of Dancing Rabbit. It will be for a special friend of mine, someone present at Dancing Rabbit frequently, although not exactly my neighbor. We will build a home for a fiercely wild creature–fire.

Fire is magic. I love sleeping up on my living roof under the stars. I love seeing the waning rays of the sunset stretch past the layers of tree canopy until they land on the rye and vetch at my side. I love watching the glow of the fireflies as they emerge from the draw in the early summer haze. But these lights are surpassed by another light for me. I strike a match and hold it to my tinder of oak splinters, and the flames lick up inside their home of stacked bricks. This light floats from my rooftop garden to the stars above. This light contains the chaos of the universe. It is destruction, warmth, transformation, and power. And it is confined to a space I could hold in my hands.

Fire is resilience. Capitalism tries to sell us things, but sometimes the technology most appropriate for our lives isn’t purchased. Fire is effective, and it is within reach. I like traveling in my 1989 van. My aunt has a Winnebago. Her electric system went on the fritz, and she told me the lengths that she went to get it fixed, the thousands of dollars it cost her. “What was I going to do? I needed lights,” she said. My response: “Sounds like you need a candle.”

Fire is community. When I burn wood in my kitchen on my cookfire, I am often connecting. Perhaps I am talking with my neighbor as I stir the pot and they cut the carrots. Or perhaps I am connecting with the wood I’m about to burn. I split it from an offcut of a rafter I screwed into place after debarking it with a drawknife, once I hauled it from the timber following my felling it as a tree. If there was a bird singing from that tree, I heard it. Fire brings out our vulnerabilities; consider all the stories you hear from friends and strangers around a campfire, and now consider those same stories being told under the hum of a fluorescent light. Or more likely, don’t consider that, because I’m not quite sure how you could.

Fire is the synthesis of fuel and heat and oxygen. It relies on all three, and without any of these things, it can’t happen. With all three, it transforms molecules into heat, light, and new molecules (and magic). It is death, and it is birth. It is analogous to community. We cannot be fire if we do not come together.

Fire is danger. Several years ago, the Critter Kitchen burned down. Every winter, we close the kitchen down and disperse to our homes, and on the last night of the season some folks were batch canning all the bounty from the garden. It was a good harvest, yielding dozens of jars of grub. One last fire. It was a long fire, and a hot one. They went home, but a smolder remained deep in the belly of the handcrafted stove. Four hours later, the kitchen was engulfed in flames. If you ever watch a building of yours burn, it will shake you. The blazing light burns your eyes while the heat melts your skin, and there is no drink of water that will quench your raw soul as you bear witness to the loss. No homes were affected, but the danger was not a thing of facts but a creature of emotion, wild and palpable and rampant. It is a curious thing to watch a building you constructed with sweat, blood, and love be utterly destroyed, and know that the stove you built was ultimately the source of that destruction. Sometimes, we forget that fire is not always confined to a space we can hold in our hands. Let us not forget this.

Despite the speed and strength of the local fire department, the building was destroyed. All of it was destroyed, anyway, except for one thing. The cob oven. Built from clay and sand, it remained stalwart and unaffected by the forces that rent the wood to ash and the metal to crumpled waves. Massive and unyielding, it was like an elephant after a rain.

But we have rebuilt the kitchen (and what a kitchen it is!). Between the damage from the firefighters’ hose blasts and incompatibility with the new kitchen’s design, we decided to dismantle the cob oven (it was a painful decision). And so now we need a new one. We need an oven to rise from the ashes and serve as testament to the resilience of community. I invite you to come and help us build it. Help us build a home for fire.

Alis Yoder has lived and built at Dancing Rabbit for 16 years. He enjoys building with many materials, but particularly enjoys clay for its versatility and companionship to fire. The cob oven workshop he is leading August 21-23* will examine fire appliances of all kinds, from rocket stoves to batch box heaters to the creation of the cob oven in the majestic rough and tumble Critter Kitchen. A deep examination of thermal properties of insulation and mass will attune students to one of the most misunderstood elements of natural building–heat transfer. Expect technical learning alongside applied technique. And fun. Expect fun.

*These are the correct dates for the 2026 Cob Oven Workshop. The last publication included the previous year’s dates by mistake. Find more up to date information here.

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Do It Anyways: A Dancing Rabbit Update

The Webmaster — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:28:57 +0000

As I look back on six years of being the editor of this little publication, and the years I’ve spent writing about my strawbale building project, one thing that has been consistent is the fresh perspective I get from people who are seeing my project for the first time.

Liz here, sharing my experiences of building a straw bale building in a rural ecovillage in Missouri.

It’s hard to describe the personal hurdles overcome, the losses, the wins, the disappointments, the moments of discouragement and the decision fatigue that have come with the seven-year journey that is my project. So mostly I don’t try. There is the satisfaction and joy of building things that keeps me coming back to it. But some questions from the latest natural building workshop students and the latest visitor program guests inspired me to describe some of the personal aspects to the project.

I read recently that fears pop up in our lives so they can be released. We think of fears as being immovable, but my experience is that different fears can be addressed differently. Some fears just need encouragement and support and maybe a physical presence from someone who supports you, who holds you accountable in a loving way as you walk your way through it. I have a memory of teaching a woman how to use a table saw for the first time, and the spontaneous gathering of other women working there around her, cheering her on as she cut her first board.

Some fears need a f—k it I’m doing this anyway mindset. I used this approach a lot at the beginning of my project because I didn’t have any experience to draw on. I did ask a few people whether they thought I should do it, but in the end it’s just you making the decision. In the end it was knowing myself and wanting to have this knowledge and experience and that taking the leap would provide me with that experience, and wouldn’t that be the coolest thing ever? It was also a controllable risk, where I could pull out at any point.

I often address my fears by addressing everything about it within my control and then reassessing to see if I can do whatever it is. Sometimes I’ll do something I’m afraid of because someone is standing right there and I don’t want to admit I’m afraid (a version of the f—k it, I’m doing it anyway approach). Coming out on the other side of a fear builds confidence and resilience; and sometimes reminding myself of that is what prompts me to put a fear aside.

Another aspect to the build for me was shifting from unconsciously being pulled into being who others thought I should be, to being who I actually am. As I move into older age, I test and confirm who I actually am. I do slip into being an older person, especially when others assume who I am and what I’m capable of based on stereotypes. But I end up rebelling against it, usually because being treated like a stereotype feels awful, and that’s my signal to test and confirm who I actually am. This last cycle of that was a doozy. It took a lot of effort to finally pull out of it.

There are many advantages to working alone, as I have decided to do this building season. Autonomy and sovereignty are high on my personal needs list, and working alone this season allows me to break the dynamic of the last seven years of teaching people how to do things while learning them myself for the first time, while being leaned on as a teacher and “decider,” while being assessed on the outcome as if I was a pro.

Working on my own, I can listen to music in my ear buds as I work, not needing to be available for interruption at a moment’s notice with questions from others. I can make decisions in my head, without the struggle to be patient and diplomatic while I field suggestions from others, even while I have most times already considered and decided against those suggestions (I do spend a considerable amount of waking hours thinking about building, compared to most people).

And sometimes there are drawbacks, as I experienced last week. I was putting decking boards on top of rafters for the patio roof, when, after nailing in a board, I realized I had trapped myself in a tiny space between rafters, with the ladder just far enough away that I couldn’t lower myself thru the tiny space to step onto the ladder. And yeah, for once, no one was around, even if they could help me. And that board was in for the ages, having been nailed in with a power tool called a framing nailer with an enthusiastic number of nails.

With the hot Missouri sun beating down on me, I sat on the bond beam eight feet in the air and contemplated solutions. Middle school gymnastic moves flashed in my head, along with a feeling in my gut from every time someone had implied or outright said that I was too old to be climbing ladders and working up high, or doing anything physically hard for that matter. It was a combo of a gymnastic move and confidence from strength training three times a week that got me out. I had a good chuckle over it, then returned to putting the next board up.

My answer to the question of how to make something happen in your life is this: go ahead and do that thing that really sparkles for you, that juicy idea that won’t leave you alone. Don’t focus on the outcome, or fear, or mistakes, and more on each next step. Move to an ecovillage, or raise goats, or start a business. Those personal qualities that you think you lack will emerge or develop in real time, as you go. And at regular intervals, look at where you’re going and the big picture so you can adjust. Like steering a boat into a slip.

Curious how to build your own backyard cob oven? Wondering how simple materials like clay, sand, and straw can turn into beautiful, functional, wood-fired ovens?

Join us August 15–17, 2025, at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for a hands-on cob oven workshop with experienced natural builder Alis (Kyle) Yoder.

Over this immersive weekend, you’ll:

Gain confidence building with natural materials
Build a long-lasting, efficient oven dome
Learn how to apply natural plasters for protection and beauty
Get creative with mosaics and sculptural details
Collaborate with a supportive group of learners
Explore natural buildings at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Deepen your skills in sustainable, earth-friendly living

No experience is required—just bring your curiosity and a willingness to get your hands (and feet!) a little muddy.

Currently $100 off

Spots are limited — register now: https://www.dancingrabbit.org/natural-building-registration/

Or, click here to learn more

We hope to see you here!

Liz Hackney is the editor and a contributing writer for this publication. For a detailed look at her straw bale building project, go to: thehubcollective.substack.com.

The post Do It Anyways: A Dancing Rabbit Update first appeared on Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.