Our fourth visitor session of the year began this past week, bringing together a fresh group that includes both new and previously-met friends. We are again opening our homes, kitchens, and lives in hopes of sharing knowledge, influencing some kindred souls, and perhaps attracting a few to make this their home as well. Tereza went so far as to share her birthday, too, as the week culminated in an excellent dance party curated by DJ Ben Brownlow.
Ted here at Dancing Rabbit, bringing you a little taste of the village from this past week or so.
Our visitors attended talks on Dancing Rabbit history, alternative building styles, and our land use planning norms, among others, as well as joining in a work party or two. Neighbor Alyson from Red Earth Farms taught a workshop for Rabbits and visitors on consensus decision-making.
Zach hosted a viewing of the second Republican presidential candidates debate Wednesday eve at the Mercantile, inviting some political conversation.
Some of the visitors also helped us achieve what many of the regular ultimate frisbee players have commented on as being one of the most robust games of the year, not long before Tereza’s dance party. No wonder we were all sore on Sunday.
On September 12 we held our annual Open House here in the village, and we couldn’t have asked for a better day. Morning dawned sunny and warm, and a crew of villagers went to work setting up the village to receive lots of visitors. Others prepared tables to offer information about Dancing Rabbit and the Fellowship for Intentional Community, and some their various goods to display, including everything from cookies and bread at the Spiral Scouts table, to jewelry, produce, herbal soaps and tinctures, and re-tread clothing at the Village Faire. We’d worked hard to tidy the village in the weeks previous, both collectively and individually.
What ultimately made the event, though, were the many dozens of you who showed up to have a look around and see and hear what we’re up to. Over the years of participating in this event I have come to recognize many returning faces, so that the groups coming into Ironweed kitchen (my station during the tours) to hear about food sustainability feel like friends coming for a chat.
I only wish I had longer to talk with folks, as many bring interesting stories and inspiration of their own to share with us. Thankfully some lingered long enough at the end (with the Mercantile’s offerings to sustain them) that I managed to catch up with a few after the final tour.
In all we hosted nearly 200 friends from near and far over the course of the afternoon, and I only hope those of you who were able to attend enjoyed it as much as we did. Hope to see you again next time!
The autumnal equinox is near at hand now, bringing cooler nights and shorter days. Some trees have already begun dropping their leaves (notably honey locust and cottonwood) as the winds return more steadily to our daily weather mix. The ever-changing prairie colors have resolved to their final burst of color, strewn lavishly with plumes of goldenrod and clusters of purple asters against the still-green backdrop. Our honey bees are furiously making the best of what remains, stocking their own larders against the winter to come.
That wind means the Ironweed turbine is contributing a greater portion of our power again after the comparatively still summer season (occasional storms notwithstanding). We welcome that development as the number of daylight hours during which to gather solar power dwindles.
This week Kale and Amy (Ironweed work exchangers) and I finally managed to get a solar-tracking panel rack erected behind our kitchen, meaning that the panels attached to it face the sun more directly through each day by means of some ingenious sun-activated hydraulics. Sitting atop a 12-foot pole also means they’ll still see the sun over the kitchen roof when it is at its lowest angle in the sky around the winter solstice. That in turn means fewer candles to burn on short winter days.
As I wrote about some weeks back, we’ve been making cheese steadily down at Ironweed, generally combining the product of several mornings’ and evenings’ milkings from the goat co-op’s two does, twice weekly, to make three-gallon batches of goat cheeses of various sorts. Each gallon produces about a pound of finished cheese, so we’re producing something like six pounds of cheese per week.
That may sound like a lot for one kitchen, but keep in mind that we are sharing this cheese among ten or more people in two eating coops, and that we are producing both fresh, mostly brined cheeses for near-term consumption, as well as pressed, hard cheeses that require aging for at least a month or two. This past week I continually admired the latest three-pound farmhouse cheddar Amy produced, as it spent the days letting its surface dry prior to waxing. She won’t still be here to try this one by the time it is ready to eat, but we do plan to break into the first goat cheddar we made back in July before our hard-working helpers depart.
So far we’ve aged the hard cheeses in a fridge, but we are nearing the time of year when our root cellar starts to hold the cooler temperatures and high humidity appropriate for aging cheese. This past week Kale spent several days building a cheese cage that can hold four racks of four large cheeses each. Small-gauge steel mesh covers all sides to protect the cheeses aging within against any possible small rodents that might find their way inside the cellar. Now the root cellar can serve as cheese cave, too!
Ultimately cheese making is a way to preserve quantities of milk for leaner times of year, and is part of the amazing range of food preservation techniques developed by humans all over the world in a time before electric refrigeration, packaged foods, and so on. Having grown up in that latter era, I’ve always wished to reclaim those previous ways of knowing.
Each cheese we know by name is a result of the particular combination of climate, vegetation, and local microflora (bacteria, yeasts, fungi) found in one place and worked with by people and the product of their milking animals over many generations. I’m enjoying learning the ropes with commercially prepared starter cultures and rennets, but eventually I want to learn what cheese our little corner of the earth might naturally make.
I’ve got my winter reading and cheese experiments lined up with Rae’s loan of the newly-published The Art of Natural Cheesemaking by David Asher, and another I just ordered. Meanwhile, our fridge is full of goat milk again, so I’m off to make the next cheese. I’d love to hear from any cheesemakers out there!
Happy equinox to all you earth-dwellers, and may your harvest season be long and fruitful!
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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.