Greetings friends and neighbors! Katherine here writing to you from the snowy (albeit muddy) prairie of Missouri!
A certain Handsome Groundhog has made this Happy Rabbit very happy with the announcement of six more weeks of winter! With the season as mild as it has been, I definitely welcome more time for sledding, broomball, and igloos!
Every Sunday at our little village, Dancing Rabbit has a weekly meeting called the Week In Preview, or WIP. We schedule our forthcoming week with meetings, community dinners, yoga classes, and special events like dance parties and movie night.
One of my favorite portions of the WIP is the “I Heart DR” section in which we say just that, what we love about Dancing Rabbit. This week was no different in our appreciation of each other, the land, and sled ramps! Nathan hearted Oliver and Ewan for helping him make the “best sled ramp ever”!
While winter tends to slow down our schedules around here and make for more connection time with each other and play, this week seemed pretty busy for a lot of us. Our busy schedules led to the most extraordinary sight of one lone Rabbit (Nathan) repeatedly enjoying his new ramp on our sledding hill, Vista de la Moo. Rock on, man! I hope that you found that one perfect ride.
I think that one reason things seem busier around here is the preparation for our annual DR Retreat. Every mid-February the Rabbits come together for a weekend to present our goings-on of the year regarding our committee work.
With over 50 committees and tasks to keep this village running (if not always smoothly), we have a lot to re-cap. The presentations of such have taken the form of Pecha Kucha, which is a presentation style of 20 slides for 20 seconds (totaling 6 minutes and 40 seconds) per topic. The past few years have proven this a fun and informative way to share our work with each other, and often leads to laughter when a particularly amusing picture is shared with the group.
This year I will be putting together the slides for the Village Council (a decision making body that operates internally by consensus in lieu of the full membership) and the Member and Residency Committee (MARC). MARC tracks the integration of new residents and members with interviews, evaluations, and liaison programs. We maintain policy regarding the population and keep the community informed on individual’s intentions to move or leave the village.
Here is a sneak preview of the MARC presentation: total population, 65 Rabbits. Those numbers are broken down into 41 members, 14 residents, and 10 children. What we also take into account (which I will not break down for you here because either my brain will explode or yours will) is the on/off farm time of folks who live here. Many people travel during the winter season, sometimes for several months, which tends to skew our numbers in terms of the population ratios that we track in certain areas.
Dancing Rabbit has agreed to maintain a balanced gender ratio that will no go beyond 40%/60% for men and women. We also have a kid population cap that keeps us at 30% children of the total population. We do not limit the number of children that Rabbits may have, yet we may put a family on the waiting list for residency if their number of children puts us over that 30% mark. A waiting list is also used in the same scenario for the gender ratio and also the pet population. We maintain a dog population that will not supersede 15% of the total human population.
I do not know how all of these numbers and policy hit y’all but I can say that this has come from many years of meetings, bridging with each other, and figuring out what works for our community.
Some folks love dogs and others find them more of a burden on our society; thus the dog ratio. Some folks want lots of kids in their lives and others are striving for zero population growth for sustainability. Whatever the method to this madness, we have figured out how to live with each other and hold individual values in our collective consciousness.
To end this week’s article, I would like to share my own “I heart DR”.
I heart the midwives of Dancing Rabbit! Alyssa and Sara are amazing women who have been super busy this last month with 2 successful births. Congratulations, families! Along with Teresa from nearby Rutledge, these busy bunnies have been bustling from births, to post-partum appointments, back to yet more expectant mothers, and now, on to the capital! Yes, to Jefferson City, Missouri for Cookie Day 2015.
Some villagers are encouraging the midwives by making sweet treats for them to share with our lawmakers, alongside a message of support for the work of midwifery. Alyssa is bringing literature on the benefits of midwifery and will speak on behalf of her work and passion. It is not only the hard work of these women that “I heart” but also their conviction to stand up for what they believe in and spread their message to others.
Strong women like this in our village are one of the reasons that I am proud to be a Dancing Rabbit. Thank you for that, ladies. In community, *Katherine*
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Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and nonprofit outside Rutledge, in northeast Missouri, focused on demonstrating sustainable living possibilities. Find out more about us by visiting our website, reading our blog, or emailing us.