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.

The Milkweed Mercantile at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an off-the-grid, straw bale bed & breakfast, organic cafe, and eco general store. Alline gives us a mini tour of the business, which is currently under construction, but opening soon.

The Mercantile is currently a finalist for a $10K award at Ideablob.com. Please consider voting for us if you like what we’re doing. The winnings will go towards the purchase of a wind turbine if we get enough votes. Simply visit this link and register to vote: Straw bale off-the-grid business opens!

Thanks for your support!

Rocket stoves are superefficient wood-fired stoves that can easily be built using readily available and recycled materials. They are a common sight in cob, straw bale, and other natural building designs.

In this video, Nathan and Tony describe two different rocket stove systems, detailing the inner workings of the stoves and their unique ability to store heat much more effectively than traditional wood stoves. Unlike other stoves, rocket stove flues can run horizontoally through cob benches or other cob furniture, effectively storing much more heat that would otherwise be lost.

For more information about rocket stoves, visit rocketstoves.com, or check out Ianto Evans’s and Leslie Jackson’s book Rocket Mass Heaters: Superefficient Woodstoves You Can Build (And Snuggle Up To).

This video is also available on Revver.

Here’s a brief look at the seasonal aspects of life at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Daily routines are largely influenced by the current season – winter is a time for relaxing, socializing, indoor projects, spring planning, and most importantly, staying warm. And by the end of winter, members are gearing up and itching for spring with new or continuing building projects and gardening plans.

In this video, Alyson describes wintertime maple sap collection, Liat shares her plans to transform a school bus into a house (complete with greenhouse), and Dan talks about seed saving and starting seedlings.

This video is also available on Revver.

Part 1

Part 2

Lately, there’s been a lot of building work going on around Dancing Rabbit, including everything from the continuing progress on Ironweed‘s cob/straw bale hybrid kitchen, to the frame construction of the Milkweed Mercantile, and to Dan’s urbanite foundation construction for his soon-to-be straw bale house.

So for this episode of Dancing Rabbit TV, we’re taking the opportunity to provide a “how-to” natural building lesson, an in-depth video about earthen plastering techniques and application. Tamar guides us through every step of the way, showing how easy it is to make natural plaster from just a few simple ingredients (there might be one somewhat surprising ingredient in there, too!), and both making and mixing the plaster, and then applying it to a natural home wall. Anyone who might have some curiosity or interest in learning more about natural home building, or specifically earthen plastering is encouraged to take a look!

You can also download a high quality Quicktime version of this video (62MB).

In the second episode of DRTV, we take a look at Larkspur, home of Dancing Rabbit members Tony B. and Alyssa. In their tour, the duo includes information and tips about their natural house design and building process. Larkspur features local and sustainable building materials, including reclaimed lumber, light clay straw insulation, and earthen plaster, and its power is provided by renewable energy sources, including solar panels and a wind tower.

You can also find this video on YouTube and Revver.

Or, you can also download a high quality Quicktime version (52MB).