One Year Living Off-the-Grid at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Hi. I’m Brian, a new writer here at Planetsave. For the past eighteen months, I have been living off-the-grid at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, a rural intentional community located in northeastern Missouri.
Dancing Rabbit is a community composed of 45 individuals dedicated to sustainable living and creating cultural change. Renewable energy from solar panels and wind turbines powers the entire village, which is made up of natural buildings constructed using earthen (such as straw bale and cob) and reclaimed materials. All drinking and cleaning water is collected using rain catchment systems, and three biodiesel-fueled vehicles provide the entire group with transportation needs. Much of our food is grown in our organic gardens.
It is from this unique perspective of living in an ecovillage that I hope to share with you dear readers the experience of living sustainably. Having been here for nearly 18 months, I am fully settled into this off-the-grid lifestyle. I’m even now busy building my very own cob house. Things you might find me talking about are natural building, sustainability in daily life, local foods, community, and a myriad of related topics.
Thanks for having me and look forward to more musings from off-the-grid!
(Image credit: pjchmiel at flickr)
Great to have you here. I’ve visited DR (I went to Truman and one of my best friends interned there one summer). It’s truly an amazing place, and my first visit there is probably the catalyst that opened my eyes to sustainability. So glad you’ll be giving us updates of what’s going on up near Rutledge!
I can’t wait to read your posts. Dancing Rabbit must have been a wonderful experience. It’d be great to hear about what life was like at an ecovillage.
Hey Brian, what a fun and coincidental stumble.
I just met Liat at Burning Man and learned all about DR – hope to visit you all sometime.
applause! the only way I could move in is- if it’s handicapped-accessible?
hey – thankyou for promoting living a good way
I’m from South Africa and we’re on the brink of having our transkei coastline mined away. It’s a beautifully untouched area of the world and it breaks my heart to know that people think they can just sell it for money. it makes no cosmic sense really.
we’ve a petition running at http://www.petitiononline.com/xolobeni/petition.html
if you could sign it and spread the link you could help us preserve a beautiful, unique place of the world.
This is no joke. we are desperate and all our government sees is the money.
any help will probably go a long way
peace and love k
Does Dancing Rabbit have internet connectivity?
this article has been posted less than 24 hours and already two friends I know not from here have told me about it. crazyness!
Brian does all his blog posts via carrier pigeons we raise here at Dancing Rabbit
Actually we have DSL provided by our rural phone co-op.
While Brian spends his day building his house out of mud and straw, at night he’s blogging about it all on his lap top via solar power.
Low tech meets high tech everyday at DR.
Hi All ,
If anyone knows of an “off-the grid” community in Florida could you post info here or email it ?
Thanks in Advance !
there is one fixin to be built ib st augustine from what i have been told