Not to embrace a cliché at the get-go, but spring is in the air, and with it, a rebirthing. The next generation of vegetables, birds, flowers, and yes, rabbits are bursting forth with youth, vigor, and potential. Robins are nesting in earnest in every corner of my house, and today, I had the first herbed garden salad out of my garden. My favorite time of year is finally here.
Julie here, writing to you this week while sunshine spills through my screened door into my small but adequate 240sf strawbale house, while my solar inverter hums with the reassurance that I am feeding electricity into the grid. My pressure cooker is decompressing from a job of canning 100% home grown chicken soup with garlic and walking onions. As fellow Rabbit Dennis said to me this morning: we are blessed in our abundance.
It seems that with this spring in particular, many changes have been taking place, with some folks deciding to leave for a spell (which we refer to as a sabbatical), while some new people are arriving to give Dancing Rabbit a chance to call their home. The initial period of adjustment with the relay of changes every year never gets any easier, as we’re always sad to see people go, and are equally interested in integrating new people who decide they want to stay.
I’ve seen many dear friends leave, and have had just as many move here. I just wish sometimes that I could gather every friend I love into one place, to work and live beside me, but such is not the way of reality. We have former Rabbits in all corners of the country, and counting beloved former work exchangers, multiple countries. Alas, we must love our friends while they are near, and remember and love them when they are afar.
Speaking of which, Ziggy and Pug made an appearance about a week ago, much to my incredible delight! Pug the pug slept both in my house and Dan’s in an effort for us to reunite with him, and to reacquaint ourselves with his inferior nasal passages. Yes, I had to wear earplugs as he snored away, thanks for asking.
It’s certainly a challenge to feel much is lacking while Ben and Mae have been migrating their beautiful animals to different homes with portable fencing, in order to allow them to eat the verdant grasses around people’s dwellings, instead of employing labor intensive means to keep the weeds and grass at bay. The milking goats will then take their mowing efforts, and convert it into food for their newborns, and, eventually, for us. I think that allowing the animals to do all of the work for us, while producing milk to boot is a fine example of engineering an elegant solution to an age-old dilemma.
Sometimes at Dancing Rabbit there is a need to strike a balance between helping the community in direct and visible ways, in terms of assisting in formulating new policies and regulations, and realizing what one’s personal comfort level is in terms of being able to contribute in a way that best represents who they are. Different people have different ways of valuably giving of themselves. It is no secret that I have a low tolerance for meetings and decision making— it’s not as though I don’t find it an interesting way to observe how the under-workings of DR unfold; I just happen to have a difficult time expressing myself in a group setting, and have decided to trust others to make certain decisions for the community. If you could hear the well-educated and articulated folks involved our decision making process, I trust that you’d feel the same.
Despite having previous public speaking experience with teaching biology labs as a grad student, and giving countless presentations over my years in college, I’ve never gotten over my anxiety of talking in front of groups of people. It’s just uncomfortable to me. So, aside from my committee work, and other assigned tasks that I have taken on, I’ve decided to be the “surprise treat deliverer” of the village.
So many people here likely go underappreciated for all of the things that they do, and it just so happens that nothing gives me greater joy than distributing homemade organic treats to whoever I see, as a personal validation that someone cares about them. It’s not directed at any group of people in particular; I just happen to enjoy, with my full self, to give delicious treats such as homemade Boston cream doughnuts, homemade caramel, British toffee, vegan chocolate cake, or homemade twix (made with local butter and direct-trade cacao), to people at random. This is done out of simple appreciation for the people around me that I wish to show some love for, even if we don’t talk often, given that you can’t be close to everyone in a village our size. It’s just my current preferred way of giving. I’m grateful that I live in a place where my confections are so readily accepted, and that we can choose alternative ways of showing appreciation.
This week we participated in something called “open space technology”, which is a fancy way of describing meetings that took place throughout the day, from 9-5, in an open format. Individuals suggest topics they want to discuss, and then whoever wants to discuss that topic gets together to do so. One common outcome is a brainstorm to problem-solve whatever topic is at hand at that time. It could be anything from what sort of human-power technologies can be used to educationally demonstrate alternative ways of accomplishing otherwise mechanized methods of completing a task, such as washing laundry using a bicycle for the spin cycle, to figuring out how to garner more village-wide support for maintaining everyday needs such as refurbishing our solar showers. Anything goes. Plus there were some good snacks, thanks to Caleb and others.
This week we also had a 3-hour strategic planning meeting, with one topic being the best way to go about educating the public about environmental sustainability. There was some brief discussion about how using the internet is incredibly resource intensive. Did you know that the internet requires 1.5% of our nation’s electrical resources to keep it up and running? To put that into perspective, that is the equivalent of 75% of an entire state’s electricity production. Think about that for a moment. It is a tremendous energy expenditure, but a method that probably reaches the most people, in the most efficient way. We realize that the difference that we make in the world is the inspiration we provide with the educational tools that accompany our message of living sustainably. The more we can do that, the more we can hope that the people we reach will inspire and educate others in turn.
I believe that is the sustainability jackpot: It is through our indirect reach that we will make the greatest difference. I envision educational outreach as a small pebble being dropped with intention into an expansive lake, with the ripples ending only where they meet the shore, or last group of people.
There was also some discussion about the resources used to draw people physically to Dancing Rabbit. Sure, we have about 60 visitors each year that go through our visitor program, and probably four times that attending tours and our open house, but I am guessing that most of them will tell their friends and family about what they’ve learned, and with luck, inspire them to make some positive environmental changes in their lives as well. Them travelling here is a fine use of resources when we consider that the ultimate result is us having the ability to directly share the imperative message that change needs to happen now if we are to have any resources left for future generations.
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More news! As Julie mentioned above, some folks are taking some time away. Tony and Rachel, Dancing Rabbit’s two remaining founders, have decided to take a sabbatical starting this summer. They’ll be spending the next 6-12 months in Berkeley, CA and are hoping to find a community or cooperative house to live in during that time. Tony is looking for a job where he can work on addressing climate change during this break, and Rachel will be continuing her work related to sustainable development in Nicaragua (as well as taking this time to dance as much as possible and enjoy what city life has to offer). There will certainly be some big shoes to fill, and we’ll miss them a lot while they’re gone.
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And check out this upcoming event! DR is hosting an educational workshop “Hands On” Intro to Natural Building, taught by Rabbit and builder Hassan Hall, on Saturday May 24th, right after the Village tour. The workshop, scheduled for 3:30 – 5:00 pm, costs $15 per person and will include: planning for different phases of construction; a look at some of the building techniques used at Dancing Rabbit (straw bale, light-clay straw, cob, earthbags, earthen plasters); and a hands-on experience with one of the above techniques. For more information, see the Events page on the Dancing Rabbit website.
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.