Communities

Yesterday, Sandhill celebrated it's 34th anniversary.

We had an all-day party, which included a gigantic potluck dinner, a Treasure Hunt for the young (or young at heart, and spry of foot), sweat lodge, barn dance, and may pole—all interlarded with lots of conversation and laughter. The rain almost held off until we were done. Some of the neighbors were caught by the late precipitation, and stayed the night, extending our party into this morning. It was a lovely time.

This year the revelers had a distinctively younger cast. In addition to Sandhill's under-40 additions of Apple, Thea & Jacob, Kevin & Ann, and freshly arrived intern Sarah, there have been four babies born at neighboring Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms (two each) since our party last year. The wheel is turning.

The way I understand it, the Greeks considered 34 to be the perfect age—the point where youth and vigor were just balanced by age and experience. So what's not to like about the cmty being 34? Who can resist the lure of claiming to be the "perfect age"? Who knows, maybe we'll have the perfect growing season. (Though for that to occur, it'll need to warm up and dry off licketty split, and I'm not holding my breath.)

After years of a lower population (down to five adults) we're now on the rise again. While it would be a stretch to call life here perfect, morale is high, the sun is shining on our faces, and the wind is at our back. And that's worth celebrating at any age.

i have a cool kid. Kids are an amazing crap shot, you dont know what kind you will get and you don't necessarily have that much control over how they come out (parents love to think that they do, but the other factors often overwhelm their efforts). i got lucky.

Willow has some wonderful primaries (people who regularly spend a couple hours a week with him, getting labor credits for this work in my communities elaborate work system). Yesterday, Trout took Willow to the pond with a fishing rod and some of our vegetarian sausage. They were going fishin'.

Our pond is tiny. Since it is principally for swimming, it was designed with upstream filters and catchment pools so it would not have fish in it. But life only being secondarily concerned with the will of man (sic), other things happened.

As Willow tells it, they put a small piece of soysage on to the hook, Trout did the casting and Willow pulled it in slowly. The did this a dozen times with no effect. Willow convinced Trout to pull the hook and afix a larger piece of soysage to the hook and within moments a fairly good size fished, probably a trout (no relations) was snagged. Willow pulled it in with great joy and mild trepidation.

The Dancing Rabbit video blog (or Dancing Rabbit TV) is now ready, and the first video is up:

http://drtv.dancingrabbit.org/

Please be sure to pass the link on!

Hope you all enjoy and keep your eye out for future episodes.

Many thanks to Brian for his hard work on creating DRTV!