Howdy rabbiteers! Ben here, churning out some quality, high-fiber journalistic fodder for your informational needs. Currently, our climate requires both shorts and muck boots, as the several inches of rain we have received in recent days haven’t completely evaporated in the warm breeze. Signs of an emergent spring abound. Blossoms of peach, pear and cherry dangle in front of my face on my morning sojourns to the common house. (Gotta get that outhouse built!) I occasionally catch a whiff of floral perfume when I’m near Lobelia. I’ve also been eating better these days. For those of us lacking a greenhouse or hoop house, salad season is finally here, with wild greens and edible weeds popping up all over. This week we have been eating cress, peppergrass, chickweed, violets, dandelions and cleavers. This morning might be a good one for morels, but what would I know, I’m just sitting in front of a computer screen. At least I’m less likely to host our burgeoning tick population while I’m inside.
Of utmost importance to convey is that May is National Bike Month. I’m pretty sure National Bike Month was chosen to be the month in which the majority of Americans could consent to riding a bike, which is a shame, because nothing beats the camaraderie of connecting with another fellow cyclist in a blizzard or downpour (used to happen to me much more often). Some elves or gnomes or other tinkering peoples have infiltrated our own Bike World in the past few weeks, sorting and organizing parts, building new infrastructure to better facilitate bicycle repair, even getting one or two community bikes in functioning order. All we have to do is leave them a few dollars for chain lube and cables, and the occasional cool beverage. Just the other day I took my daughter in the bike trailer for an afternoon-long trek around Scotland county. Road surfaces were passable and mean dogs were generally distracted. The tailwind aided greatly in the “toward” part of our journey, but the headwind on the way back was definitely formidable. Perhaps right now you are eyeing the old ten-speed in the garage, focusing your intention of riding that bike again. Do it. If after a couple more days, you still haven’t done it, sell your car, check out Sheldon Brown’s bicycle repair website(www.sheldonbrown.com), take the bike apart and put it back together before you go to work the next day, and it will all be downhill from there. That’s what I did several years ago, and I’ve logged several thousand bike miles since then. Yes, the winds of change are blowing for our beloved Bike World. Having bid farewell to (hopefully) the last bike that we have to outright reject for inclusion in our collection, what we have now is something of a parts library, which will hopefully, with the help of more able-minded wrenches (slang term for bike mechanics) replicate more permutations of appropriately simple machines for transport, labor, and fun. I predict that by the end of the year, Bike World will have a more organic, closed-loop materials flow, resembling the leaves of a tree which fall and nurture that tree, rather than the industrial model, where our junk disappears in a truck somewhere and goes away to garbage heaven.
Speaking of a “whole buffalo” approach to our impact, I have been eating a lot of rabbit lately. I am not particularly impressed by the taste, but not entirely offended by it either. The Eastern cottontail has at various times infiltrated gardens here in this ecovillage. Rabbits of both varieties (the Dancing ones and the type that run in zig-zags) enjoy their tasty, succulent, green vegetation. The reproductive potential for fruit-tree nibbling, spinach munching rabbits is great, because they haven’t created any guidelines regarding their own mating. Well I am here to humbly admit that our kitchen co-op is doing the best it can in helping relieve some pressure from our neighbor’s gardens, many of whom rely more on vegetables than we currently can or do. Often in recent days a generous vegan neighbor of ours has gifted us with the living personages of these carrot-biting offenders (I watched a lot of cartoons as a child), and we have dutifully dusted off our important volumes of homesteading books, including the Foxfire books and Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of County Living in order to accomplish the simple frugal act of feeding ourselves. Sparing the details, we try to make the highest use of all the rabbit, always thank it, and always check the liver for sign of flukes. Tularemia season is just around the corner so we may not have many more opportunities to enhance our culinary practice, but I can report that rabbit fricassee in a dutch oven has been the finest preparation thus far. I condone no particular diet, though I have seriously dabbled with veganism in the past, and prefer to typify my relationship with my food merely as that which is most ecologically sound given my current circumstances. The fact that my diet helps in some way to support our neighbor/gardeners is a boon. As much as I want to live the type of lifestyle where the transaction between me and my food is complete and compassionate, and as much as I want to step away from the culture of interpersonal and interspecies competition, I do feel a bit like Elmer Fudd in my dealings with the rabbits on occasion. Sometimes there are minor snafus. I guess I’m not quite like my forebears yet, who could dress out a squirrel with as much ease as I could shuck an ear of corn, but I’m certainly headed in that direction. I do sense more connection with all the bunnies I see hopping and hiding in the tall grass out back of our place. I might never get to truly understand what it is to be a wild thing, but I have much appreciation for wildness. Anecdotally, I picked up a bit of trivia this week, that Scotland county was once a heavy exporter of rabbit meat to Chicago.
Spring at Dancing Rabbit is a time for building. It is often difficult for me to acknowledge the impact of my habitation. We felled an oak and a cherry tree to make room for the foundation of our house. For a day or so we have been trimming and organizing the biomass with handsaw and machete for utilization. We will not wantonly burn it as brush. Usable poles are being set aside for a chicken coop. Bundles of branches await their burial in a large “hugelkultur” style raised garden bed, that will hopefully yield more trees in years to come. Buried deep in the soil, the brush will host mycelium, sequester carbon, decompose and eventually form pockets for moisture to collect. The medicinal cherry bark is being harvested and processed. To honor the various critters who were not expecting to be displaced by our pursuit of the simple life I have constructed some “wildlife hotels” out of brush on the margins of our warren, and was pleasantly surprised to find our resident mourning doves flitting about there this morning.
The mornings are cool, but not cold. Riding my bike near Rutledge I can see fields shimmering violet with clover. My daughter Althea has resumed her caterpillar collecting. By afternoon I’m in bare feet. The kid goat cries for our affection at times. From afar I spy figures on the horizon moving buckets and wheelbarrows. A tractor rumbles noticeably for a while, and then I am left with the songs of birds and the sound of grass and wind. The gooseberries are leafing. The small whitish yellow green globular clusters of tree buds have morphed and stretched. Lush, emerald grass pops up seemingly overnight. The creep of ants and worms pulses beneath my feet. I pick ticks off the dog every day now. Not many flies yet, but a few skeeters. Sodbusting up on the new warren has provided the Critter Kitchen with a bumper crop of wild parsnips. Only question remains: to ferment, or not to ferment?
Well I’d love to just chew your ear off about how we staked out contours on our ag-space with visitor Adrian for implementing swales, or how the truck got broke, or how Dennis and Sharon have begun daubing the north side of their house and baling the south, or about the ornamental tree pruning workshops, but this is a newspaper article and not an actual auditory conversation, so I can’t technically chew your ear off at all. Take it from me, ears are tough anyhow. So instead, gentle reader, I’ll merely bid you adieu, pleading once again that you consider riding a bike this month.
Dancing Rabbit is an intentional community and educational non-profit in Rutledge, Missouri, focused on sustainable living. We offer a tour of our village on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, April through October. The tour begins at 1:00 pm and generally lasts one and a half to two hours. You do not need to make a reservation for regularly scheduled Saturday tours. If you need directions, please call the Dancing Rabbit office at 660-883-5511 or email us at dancingrabbit@ic.org.