Introducing Life at an Ecovillage - Living in a Fish Bowl

Hello, Steemit! My name is Kyle. I live at Dancing Rabbit ecovillage in northeastern Missouri, and I should be plastering my house right now. 

I dig living at an ecovillage. My neighbors are fun, friendly, committed people. It's beautiful-- prairie and gardens and pastures surrounding. The cost of living is real low (I lease my lot for about $50 per month (but own the house)). It's an amazing place to learn traditional building techniques. When I have questions about how to make oak shakes, chisel out a timberframe joint (both pictured below), or how much cattail fluff to put in my plaster, I consult my more knowledgeable neighbors as often as the internet. Building your own house with natural materials and growing lots of your own food is rewarding. It's a nice place to live. 

Just because I make shingles in my long johns doesn't mean I'm above using a tractor to timberframe...

I started my house four years ago, and it still doesn't have a floor.

To be fair, I did give it a foundation, and walls, and a roof, all in the summer of 2012. I used clay from the foundation and sand from the local quarry for the walls. The featured picture window was being thrown out from someone I knew.  The rafters are trees I cut from the ditch nearby. I like my house. It's purdy. But it's been taking me the meantime to give it the finishing touches. The floor is still dust. And the plaster won't be finished until at least tomorrow, because I'm writing this post instead.  

Oh, channel Five, how lovely of you to drop by!

This is a major challenge about life here. There are distractions. 

Our lives are very much on display. We have a public tour every other Saturday. There are occasionally privately managed workshops which might teach people how to build a pizza oven or implement basic principles of permaculture in their lives. We have five visitor programs over the course of the summer (next year it will be six), which each last three weeks. In true poetry, about ten minutes after I started writing this post, a local news crew started shooting footage immediately outside my front door. One of the questions that the membership committee asks people when they move here is, "How do you feel about living in a fish bowl?" I don't mind living in a fish bowl, but it takes a lot of time. These visitors need tour guides, cooks, instructors. My kitchen co-op and subcommunity, the Critter Collective, recently built a pretty large summer kitchen-- not because we don't need a place to eat in the winter (which we don't have), but because summer is the season when we can feed upwards of 100 visitors and guests.

The Critter Summer Kitchen during construction

I don't have any delusions that what I do on a daily basis will derail climate change, or that the lifestyle I'm leading is for everyone. And that's why I can reconcile living with the distractions that come from exposure to the public eye. 

The notion of influencing the world by personally connecting with people and sharing my (somewhat) radical way of living appeals to me. I like the idea that I can model some drastic alternatives to ecologically destructive elements of the wider consumer culture, and that by sharing this experience with others, they might find inspiration to make changes in their own lives. Or at least, I hope to inspire others to consider the planet and the life it supports in a fresh light. 

Rent the Gnome Dome-- with Steem Dollars

So that's why I'm writing this introduction instead of working outside. I want to increase awareness of the different models we're exploring. But what's more, I think our alternative community is a fertile spawning ground for alternative currencies like Steem. 

We're already familiar with how subjective and elusive the concept of wealth can be, and we have both a deeper scrutiny and more open perception of how value is assigned. My neighbor @nathanbrown has been doing a great job pioneering and curating our own local, virtual currency here at Dancing Rabbit; we're not new to the idea of alternate currencies (not to mention that old concept called barter and trade...). He's hosting @stellabelle when she visits Dancing Rabbit to talk about the potential of Steemit here at the ecovillage, and he was wondering if I could give her lodging in the Gnome Dome (a hobbit hole guest room I developed when I first moved to Dancing Rabbit). I love seeing guests find joy (or perplexed wonder) in their interactions with the Gnome Dome, so I was pleased to say yes (I'll be accepting Steem dollars as payment). My hope is that everyone who comes witness our little corner of the world will be inspired to live more simply, or at least find beauty in the natural elements of the living spaces I'm trying to create. Please leave me a comment if you have further interest in using Steem Dollars to rent the Gnome Dome, or if I you'd like to peer deeper into the fishbowl of Dancing Rabbit. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go outside and smear mud on my walls.