There are cinnamon rolls at the Mercantile this morning. I am sitting in a back corner, sandwiched between the village market cabinets and a mural inlaid on the earthen wall. Hello reader, Kenny here, coming to you live from inside the cozy, cacophonous cocoon of wintertime morning coffee during Retreat.
Normally a quieter affair, this morning is bustling with the energy of change. Some coffee drinkers come and go, drifting in and out from the common space, but this isn’t a normal morning. Today is cause for celebration, as the handwritten note on the counter reminds us: “Welcome to the 2nd to last day of Retreat! :)”
For the uninitiated (like myself, until very recently), an explanation of Retreat is warranted. This is a yearly event, an on-farm convention of sorts, where multiple days are booked out for community-minded activities, discussions, planning meetings, committee reports, meals, and celebrations. Dates are set yearly based around every individual Rabbit’s schedule to accommodate the largest turnout possible (and childcare is offered so parents can fully participate). It is essentially multiple days of end-to-end meetings.
In my previous life, I jockeyed office cubicles and attended an eon’s worth of team building exercises. I “prepped for meetings” as a profession, gave quarterly reports in my sleep, updated monthly status documents reflexively, and could elevator pitch my team’s contract wins on command. Having just turned that all in to lean into this community and its culture, I wasn’t thrilled by my pre-retreat to-do list. I had committee reports to prepare for, obligations to plan around, and a lot of notes to take.
That frustration largely melted away when the puppets came out. Because of course we couldn’t give yearly committee procedural updates in a slide show. The theme of this year’s Retreat is “Not the Same as Last Year’s” and although I wasn’t present, I have been assured there weren’t any puppets. The show was a hit, even though shouting out population statistics and policy reminders through the felted mouths of muppets sounds like a good analogy for watching the news.
That presentation took place during the first week of Retreat, and during a more policy-centric timeslot. Preceding all of that this year was a community-wide round of deep check-ins. This practice sees every available and willing Rabbit sit in a circle, going one by one, speaking, uninterrupted, for upwards of 7 minutes about themselves, their joys, woes, projects, concerns, reflections on the year, and expressions of honesty and vulnerability that we all agree to hold together.
I have written here before on the practice of checkins and how genuinely they are asked for and received here, and how humanizing and grounding it can be to both speak through and to hear. Emboldened to share in a safe environment, Rabbits touched on some of their past year’s highest highs, deepest lows, and where they were in that moment. Some had prepared statements, others spoke off the cuff, and in everyone’s check-in, I found something new to appreciate them for. I am constantly in awe of the love that exists here.
After the final Rabbit shared and the activity concluded, the neat circle of people disassembled into loose gaggles of hugs and quiet conversation while people milled across the street to lunch. I lingered with tears in my eyes, watching the beautiful tapestry of people and their relationships with each other, themselves, and the land around us all twist and fold in the changing winds with a new appreciation for the complexity that goes into every moment of this grand project.
Coming back to myself now, sitting in the corner of the Mercantile in this golden morning. Conversation hums and forks clink and scrape plates as cinnamon rolls swiftly disappear from the countertop, and coffee carafes magically turn from full to empty, and back again. We enjoy this bountiful harvest on behalf of the Rabbits who volunteer at the local food pantry, and make a habit of bringing leftovers, when available. This month it was crates of blueberries, brussel sprouts, and, of course, cinnamon rolls.
It is week two of Retreat 2025, second to last day, and after this we will begin Open Space timeslots, just like an (almost) completely different fluffle of Rabbits did 10 years ago, and have every year since. These are slots that function as breakouts for specific affinities related to Dancing Rabbit projects, like community composting, new labor tracking and crediting opportunities, plans around hosting and feeding the next crop of wexers, a queer space round table, and a polar plunge in the freshly thawed pond.
Tomorrow will be the end of Retreat, and the beginning of post-Retreat follow up work (and the beginning of pre-retreat work for next year’s Retreat Planning Committee). I already have a slew of new project work to begin, and I couldn’t be happier.
During my deep checkin, a few hours into the first day of Retreat, I reflected upon a note I wrote to myself. I had taped it to a broken, but fixable Sega Genesis. “Hi from Alaska! This turns on, but has a broken coax connector. The house is mostly boxes now. Hope Dancing Rabbit is cool!” It was dated for a week from tomorrow. Not the same as last year, indeed.
Kenny Dane is a staple of DR morning coffee group most mornings. This co-parent has washed and folded mountains of children’s clothing. We salute you, Kenny.