Top 5 Reasons My Family Moved to an Ecovillage

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Kassandra Brown

The kids (and a couple adults) at DR Preschool

Picture this: Packing up the U-Haul. Saying good-bye to friends in Boulder, CO. Starting down 800 miles of highway and a few dirt roads. My two daughters sitting beside me on the bench seat. We’re heading to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

Many people have asked me why I would change our lives so radically. Here I’ll give you a few good reasons why we changed nearly everything.

Top 5 Reasons My Family Moved to an Ecovillage

Smaller environmental footprint. At Dancing Rabbit we share many things that most households in the rest of America own separately. I am part of shower and kitchen cooperatives. That means that we share the infrastructure and operating costs of bathroom and food needs. We also have a car sharing co-op where people often share rides with one another and share the costs of fuel and vehicle maintenance. This sharing lowers the environmental footprint of each individual. The other good news? It costs less than owning your own stuff too!
Living cooperatively. There is something special about relationships in community. Not everyone is your best friend or favorite person, yet we all need to learn to work together and respect our gifts and differences. Without this understanding, community falls apart. I believe this understanding will serve my children well throughout their entire lives.
Proximity makes it easier. Almost no one commutes to work. Most work is either within the community in the helping, gardening, or building trades or can be done over the internet and phone. Commuting to work is very unusual here. This helps lower environmental impact, while giving more time to play and connect with friends and family.
Adult role models: My husband and I were impressed with the level of integrity and understanding in the parents we met during our visits to Dancing Rabbit. Growing up with other adults to love and role model for them seems like such a gift to give our girls. We also want our daughters to have close relationships with other children who don’t go ‘home’ at the end of the day and are around for more than just school or playdates.
Raise more of our own food: My husband and I dream of meeting our own food needs with incredibly nutritious food raised within 20 miles of our home. We hope to cooperatively garden for our fruits and vegetables. We want to raise cows, chickens, and pigs in the grass-farming model popularized by Joel Salatin and Polyface Farm. On that farm raising the animals actually improves soil fertility. There is room here to raise our own food, to learn how to do it with other people, and to share the work and joy of preparing it. All with people who call Dancing Rabbit home.

Kassandra Brown is the mother of two girls age 7 and 4 and also a parenting coach. She offers support, guidance, and encouragement to change through her phone-based coaching services.

This Year’s Workshops at DR: Natural Building, Ecovillages, Dance, Food Preservation

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Dan Durica

As our village grows there are more opportunities for all of you out there to learn from us and at the same time find out more about our ecovillage. Attend workshops on natural building, dance, food preservation, and sustainable culture leadership, and see first hand how we are creating a model for a more sustainable world. Our workshops are organized by different people at DR, so you’ll have to contact the organizers to find out more about registration, accommodations, and details about the workshops themselves. See the links below for each workshop category. Hope to see you at Dancing Rabbit this season!

Natural Building

Timber Frame Workshop June 10-25, 2012

Students will spend 2 full weeks at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage learning the historic craft of timber frame construction using mortise and tenon joinery, as well as experiencing and learning some of the fundamental connections between building structure, design, and sustainable lifestyle alternatives.

Straw Bale Workshops July 22-August 2, 2012

Students will spend 10 days at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage learning the fundamental craft of straw bale construction, as well as plastering techniques with clay and lime, creating artistic embellishments, and more.

Ecovillage Design

Ecovillage Education US:Sustainable Culture Leadership Training June 29-August 5, 2012

Ecovillage Education is a 5-week trans-disciplinary, experiential program set within one of the US’ leading ecovillages. Develop your capacity for creating or enhancing communities and projects using social, economic and ecological sustainability lessons learned in the worlds’ most sustainable communities.

Dance

The recently opened Casa de Cultura at Dancing Rabbit is hosting two dance weekend workshops this year. The first Off-Grid Blues Weekend held last fall was a great way to break in the dance floor at the Casa de Cultura, and it was a blast for participants. This year there are two dance weekends planned. Check out the links below for more information on the workshops.

Contra Culture April 27-29, 2012

“Contra Culture” will be a unique blend of Ecovillage and Contra Dance community cultures.

Off-Grid Blues September 21-23, 2012

Off Grid Blues is a community-focused dance event. Some of the best dance instructors in the nation will be there to share their knowledge and love of dance with you.

Food Preservation

Putting Up the Harvest – Canning Fruit and Vegetables
Three sessions: July 7th, August 4th, September 15th, 2012

Join us for a food preservation workshop where you’ll get hands-on experience in an atmosphere where questions are encouraged and confidence gained. With a focus on both safety and flavor, we’ll go step by step from beginning to delicious end. Includes six hours of hands-on instruction, lunch, canning tools, recipes and samples to take home and share.

Challenges to Starting a Sustainable Business at DR

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Dan Durica

This is the second of two articles I wrote on sustainable economy at DR about 2 years ago. Some of the information may be a little outdated, such as the electrical grid references. We are now hooked up to the power grid (and feeding power back into it), though we are still not on the water or heating grid. Most information is still relevant though. If you haven’t read the previous article, look here. Just a disclaimer–these articles are my thoughts and opinions and do not represent the views of everyone at DR. My goal is to get people thinking about these things.

While nibbling on some organic crackers recently, I noticed a note on the box stating that the manufacturer buys renewable energy credits. My first thought was “I wonder why they don’t fit their entire production facility to run on renewable energy instead of just buying credits?” Wouldn’t that be a bigger step towards making their business sustainable? Going through the process of planning a sustainable land-based business at DR I’ve been learning the answer to this question.

Nearly every step of every process of production in the global economy is destructive to the planet, and it’s not surprising. The market values profit over sustainability. In our economy, it’s a rare forest that is worth more quietly growing in its ecosystem than cut up into lumber or paved over with a housing development. And often the easiest, most profitable business practices are the most destructive to the environment.

At Dancing Rabbit we follow our covenants and guidelines to reduce our everyday impact on the planet, yet many of us depend on the unsustainable economy outside DR for our income and many of our basic needs. As well, the global economy provides us sustainable technologies that we cannot manufacture ourselves, like solar power systems. Living a sustainable lifestyle as individuals is one step in creating a sustainable society, but building an economy where sustainability comes before profit is vital to our goal of saving the planet. A lot of rabbits, me included, feel that building a sustainable economy means producing our basic necessities locally and if possible within DR. This way we can be certain that the products or goods we are using at least meet our covenants for sustainability. As well, with locally made products the environmental impacts of transportation are eliminated. We can imagine a village much like in the old days with a baker, a cheesemaker, a shoemaker, etc, with our staples produced and traded here. This doesn’t mean we would isolate ourselves from any part of the economy outside our community or that we have to be building our own solar panels, but until the wider economy becomes more sustainable, we should contribute to it as little as possible, unless our contribution is in offering sustainable alternatives.

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