Viewer Questions about 13 Years in an Ecovillage
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- So last video I talked about what I thought was important to say about my life in Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage over the last 13 years. In this video I take viewer questions about life in the ecovillage.
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I love the idea! We just retired and do to the covid we couldn't move to our property, then the place we were moving to pulled out because they had nowhere they could go. So we ended up near a small town in Tennessee. We have property and a rebuilt old farm house. We couldn't be happier. The people around are so nice you feel like your on the Andy Griffith show or little house on the prairie. Everyone waves stops and talk and give us vegetables ECT. We go for morning walks and end up having coffee with people. We even planted seeds in a garden near us. The people insisted. It's so beautiful here and we love it. Property is cheap. Everything is much cheaper then Az and Wa were we've lived except food. There is a lot of ways to grow food and fish and hunt. Everything worked out with God's will.
Glad to hear you found a great place to settle in the country. It's a pleasant life.
Just discovered your channel. Thank you for the vineyard content you’ve put out there. I work in conservation and am visiting a wine grower today and these videos really helped me. Thank you. Really appreciate what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Also really like the ‘low key’ nature of how you deliver information. Such a welcome relief from many of the other ‘in your face’ videos that alot of gardening and DIY folks are doing now, so thank you for the calmness you portray. I hope your channel takes off and you can find that special place in FL that you’re looking to purchase. Have a great day and thank you for being a force for good here on this pale blue dot :) Take care, Drew
A hug from Bakersfield CA. Keep up the good work.
Hi Dan, it's good to "see" you. You seem to have found a reasonable way to deal with the challenges of winter by spending time in Florida. Perhaps you have adopted a bit of a "snowbird" approach; about half the year at Dancing Rabbit and the other half in Florida. Good for you!
Keep up the good work, my friend and keep those CZcams videos coming. I look forward to watching them.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing
You are a wonderful resource Dan. Thank you in advance for answering my questions.
How do people at DR send and receive mail?
Are there any particular building codes required in the county or enforced by the community when you build a home? And if someone already had a car, would they be allowed to keep it if they joined the community? I'm a fan of Mike Oehler's earth-integrated house design, and adding in John Hait's passive annual heat storage to make a house that requires minimal heating/cooling, but is tough to get built due to not following the various building codes most places have.
Great info! One thing I'd love to see you discuss is the COST to BUILD at DR. That's the one thing I haven't seen anyone discuss...Thanks, I'm enjoying your videos and looking forward to a visit soon.
Great that you are planning to visit soon! I should really do a video on the cost to build. I see the cost as fairly low. You don't have to buy the land and the lease rates are very low for a lot to build on. Often people are able to find reclaimed material, and because they are often building with natural materials, the cost is low. However, there is much more labor required in natural buildings, so basically people put in sweat equity. That being said, not everyone who builds and then decides to leave DR is able to sell their house for as much as they put into it or paid for it. Unfortunately we have a fairly fickle housing market here and because some houses are difficult to insure, getting financing to buy a house is difficult, so the more expensive houses don't get bought as much.
Welcome to the channel and thanks for all the questions!
Hi Dan, So glad you are doing well. We haven't heard from you in so long, I was worried. It has been hard living in a place with boarded up buildings even though you understand why people are protesting and support the cause. Many people don't wear masks even though I live in a densely populated area. This place has been very lonely as I can't see many people. I go to work once every 3 weeks but it still feels scary. I have to stay 6 to 8 feet away from anyone at work even with a mask on.I do understand why There are many cases in this area. I am happy that you aren't living in such a compact area. Wishing you well and glad you made it back to DR.
Hi Mary, I went to Florida about a month ago and just as I arrived the cases started skyrocketing. They have an evil governor who has done a really poor job and continues to be more like a troll to Floridians than a help, just like Trump. While I was there, the cases just started going up and up, as was predicted by all the health experts when the Republican governors started opening up at the peak of the first wave. I just tried to stay out of contact with many other people and wore a mask, but very few people were except at some stores that required them. It is scary and you don't want to roll the dice on getting it.
Thank you for making this video Dan. Are there ongoing DR expenses (fees, lease, etc.) that you have to continue to pay while you're spending extended time in Florida?
Yes. Because you never actually own the land and there is infrastructure to pay for and maintain, there are fees everyone pays living here and will always pay. I see these as like local taxes for the most part. There are the lease fees for the land you rent, but this is a penny per square foot per month, so it ends up being very cheap. I pay a little less than $60 a month for lease fees. We have to pay property taxes, which are pretty low. And then there are the infrastructure fees that go to common facilities like our common house, outdoor showers, humanure system, and many other opt in co-ops that provide basic needs. Some use the wifi in the common house, some have it separate in their house. These are the major expenses. there is a page on the Dancing Rabbit website that breaks down the cost of living here.
It is very affordable, but I guess the drawback is that you will always have to pay rent on the land, which if you bought property yourself you would never have to do. But those lease fees pay for roads, water, lots of other infrastructure and its maintenance that you'd have to pay for if you owned land.
@@HardcoreSustainable Thank you for your response Dan. I have a follow-up question. If a member is gone for a period of time, (as you are when you go to Florida), do you continue to pay coop fees, utility fees, etc. when you are away from Dancing Rabbit?
@@Sking32951 Currently, if you are gone for a month or more I believe, you can have most fees waved. You still have to pay lease fees if you have a "warren", or lot. I had to pay my internet while I was gone, but that's because I had just signed up and you couldn't put it on hold for the first 6 months. But normally you can just pause it.
I like what you are doing in this village.
Keep up the good work and do not give up.
Also, I do watch your videos as you post but may not comment. Keep the videos coming. More of how you operate on a daily basis.
@@dedepyle7046 I'm going to try to be better about posting more videos. I do need ideas. I enjoy doing the vlog kind of videos but people don't seem to watch them as much as some others, so I've been doing fewer of them.
Maybe about gardening, structural work, planting flowers...etc. solar power, off grid stuff. Just a few suggestions.
@@dedepyle7046 thanks! I'll try to think of more ideas under those topics.
Have an incredible day! 🙋♀️
Very interesting. The fact that stands out to me as a big hurdle in your ecovillage is distance from amenities like a bus or train station. I lived in a co-op in a city. The obligation for a shared car and thus impossiboloty to commute seems pretty foreign to me.
My non-final conclusion would be a ’truly’ eco vollage would be no further than x minutes biking distance from a ’town’ or other hub.
I’m consulting to establish a co-op, but again, near a bike and bus path to a town with 75 000 livi’g souls. Also always green. Yikes i must sqyni don’t miss snow and then burn up plants
Not sure what you mean by burn up plants. I've always thought it would have been better to locate our ecovillage closer to a population center and basic services, but if you want to actually make it an ecovillage, try building sustainable buildings in a typical city or suburb. Zoning code doesn't allow it in most places. I can't tell you how many times people tell me that they wanted to build a house like the ones we have at DR and they couldn't get approval. This is pretty much the main reason we are out in bf Missouri. It would be nice to be able to have a county with no building codes that wasn't too far from a city with a significant population. That's really not a likely scenario in the US anywhere.
Hi Dan. Enjoy your channel. I've never lived in an Intentional Community, but I would like to, and I've been looking into the lifestyle for some time and trying to figure out why so many fail or have such high turnover. What I believe is that it's not enough to have the same goals as your neighbors in the IC, whether that be sustainable living, or being completely off-grid, or vegan, or social activism, or survival, etc., but that the members core motivation for living that way needs to be aligned. It's said in many religions that motivation affects perception. If this is true ( and I believe it is) then people with different motivations are very likely not going to perceive the solutions the same. Think of a person motivated by love of nature vs. a person motivated by fear for their own survival. Chances are they're going to come up with very different goals for how to treat others and the planet. I've read that an IC has the best chance of lasting if they articulate as much as possible what their goals are to prospective members. But I wonder if they shouldn't put more emphasis on attracting those with a common motivation so that members might perceive the challenges and solutions in a more united way?
That's an interesting theory or suggestion. I do think there can be many different motivations. I find that some people don't even move here for the sustainable living goals, but are attracted by the community living part, or the inexpensive living part. We do try to choose people to live here based on their sustainable living goals, or if not, the hope that they will be influenced to want to embrace the sustainable living goals. I don't know that that ever works. I am often surprised people move here that know what we are when they move here but then arrive and don't want to follow the covenants and rules they knew existed before they moved here. Then they try to change them to make them less rigorous, or just complain about them all the time. I can see wanting to change outdated rules, but I'd expect if they really felt passionate about living sustainably they'd want to make the village even more sustainable.
I think some humans are also much easier to lead when they are treated like sheep. They are looking for someone to lead them and tell them what to do, which is how some religious communities last so long. We have 40-50 people with minds of their own, and that can cause conflict and disharmony. If we could find a bunch of people all interested in living sustainably for the sake of future generations and all the earth's creatures, I guess it's possible we would live in greater harmony. There is yet another difference in the people that are science minded versus believe in the supernatural. I find it hard to believe that these groups could find common ground overall. We have both here, but usually are able to make decisions for the community without it being an issue. It just might not mean those people see eye to eye in other ways or particularly get along.
Dan I appreciate your willingness to answer our questions. What is the turnover like in the DR population? What is the average length of time for people living there? What is the longest period of time someone has lived at Dancing Rabbit?
There are some who have lived here over 20 years. I'm at 14 now. Someone did an estimate of turnover and found it was comparable to to any other city or town anywhere. I'm not sure what that number was. I think the average length is probably closer to 5 years. We almost always have a larger number of people that have been here for a few years and then the rest staggered over many years.
Just came across your channel I am interested in creating an eco village in my area. Wondering if you have any knowledge on how to begin? Or know of any resources that could help guide me on how to begin the process?
I would recommend going to visit some ecovillages, but maybe just virtually right now. We have an ecovillage experience session normally here that introduces you to our systems and though we have canceled all our sessions this year, we are setting up a virtual way to visit Dancing Rabbit and attend these workshops and presentations. We used to have an entire course several years ago that trained people to set up their own ecovillages, but the person that taught that course has moved on. There are a few ecovillage networks in the world and you might look them up on the net. We aren't really part of one right now though we are a part of the Land Trust Alliance. Learning about land trusts could be helpful as well. There are groups setting up ecovillages all over these days, so you aren't alone. We have had some of those groups visit here in recent years to learn and talk about their plans with people here. That's a start anyways. Hope it helps.
@@HardcoreSustainable thank you for getting back to me if you do decide to do any virtual tours or workshops I am super interested in connecting and learning more I can leave my email with you? If I can be put on a list if you do have future tours/workshops?
Thanks,
Jillian
I"m curious about noise rules, things such as barking dogs, children running/shouting inside common space, radios playing, talking on cell phones... Do you have any rules around these things?
We don't have rules about devices, but norms that are posted about being absorbed in devices when others are around in the common house. You rarely see people with their faces in a device walking around the village. It's just not the way it is in the outside world in this respect.
We do have quiet hours 10pm-8am, and even on a Saturday night the dance parties that some people organize stop blasting music at 10pm and usually wrap up shortly after. You can ask the community for an exception if you want to go later, but it's rare. Music blasting in the village does happen around some people's houses. I don't know why people blast music when they are alone if they could just wear earphones, but some do. It's not a huge problem.
Kids are supposed to be quieter and contained in the common house, but it doesn't always happen. I call them "free roaming kids" because we have a policy about "free roaming dogs". A lot of parents like the fact that they can just let their kids romp around everywhere without supervision, and this sometimes leads to problems with noise or stuff getting taken or messed with.
Dogs aren't usually a problem because we do have a lot of policy limiting what dogs can do and how much noise they make. We used to allow 4 free roaming dogs in the community. These dogs had to be well behaved and not barky. Now, except my dog, who was granddogged in, dogs have to be kept on leash or inside. There are some livestock guard dogs that bark pretty much all night long, but they are kept farther out on the land and there are rules about how close to the village they can be kept.
why cant everyone vote for changes in rules instead of electing counselors who may not even share some people's wants?
why did the income sharing sub-communities vanish?
People come and go. Priorities are different for different people who come. Income sharing is hard. I'd never do it unless it was a very special group. You have to trust other people to pull their weight and contribute. Some personalities are much better at it than others. I've gotten used to dealing with the idiosyncrasies of community, but I think income sharing takes more light heartedness than I have.
You might want to research the concept called "tragedy of the commons".
I'm pretty sure that's a big reason why the income sharing wouldn't have endured.
This IS NOT a sustainable living lifestyle that I could recommend to anyone. Sustainable culture, humanism, economy, bartering structure, etc. etc. is not being taken into consideration. If your reliant on the internet for for connection to the world outside of the community or information, OR income then that IS NOT sustainable. You are still dependent on everything outside of that piece of land in order to survive but through communistic rules or by-laws aren't allow or expected to integrate with it. I SO appreciate you honesty but I feel for your living such a hellish life. Just my thoughts. Thanks.
Well, that's an extreme interpretation. It doesn't feel hellish to me. Love to know how you are existing writing this comment on CZcams and watching videos if you are following what your comment says. You also apparently have no idea what of those things you listed are being practiced here. I'd really love to hear more of your thoughts. You sound like someone critiquing the typical consumptive American lifestyle, not someone who is living on a fraction of the resources of the average American.
I can tell you from personally visiting and experiencing the village Dan lives in that it is NOT a hellish life.
@@HardcoreSustainable Sorry....just now seeing your comment due to the fact I got notice of another comment on this posting. Anywhooo........ I AM NOT making the ' claim ' of being completely sustainable and independent of the world beyond the ' Gates ". I will bless you AND the other commenter with this TRUTH for you to pursue ................ YOU WERE DELIVERED INTO THIS WORLD WITH A TWIN. TAKE CONTROL OF THAT TWIN CLAIMING YOUR BIRTHRIGHT AND YOU WILL TRULY BE FREE. Seek and you will find .... Knock and it will be opened unto you. Cheers!
@@3basketliving Whatever dude
I’m shocked someone in a community like this would be pro vaccine 💉
I'm not sure why you think that someone in a community like mine would be against vaccines. There are definitely people here who are against vaccines, but i see a huge connection between environmental problems and the vital role of science in identifying them and solving them, and the role of science in developing the technology of vaccines. I don't see any conflict there at all. Maybe it's because you somehow see vaccines as contamination?? or maybe not allowing the natural course of evolution??? Or maybe you are concerned about thimerasol, which is not really used in vaccines anymore.
I'm not pro big pharma, but vaccines have existed since way before pharmaceutical companies. I think they should be produced only by governments and not by private companies. Mostly private companies don't make much from vaccines because they are only taken once. They want to get people hooked on drugs that need to be taken regularly for invented ailments or real ailments; they don't care. I have no doubt that companies are trying hard to come up with a vaccine to Sars-cov 2 so they can make money, but it is necessary. The alternative is that there will be many unnecessary deaths and sicknesses that are potentially long term and this will interfere with the functioning of society. And I personally don't want to have to go around wearing a mask for the rest of my life because I'm worried I'll be one of the 20% of people who get it who end up with severe symptoms and either have long term health issues or die. And right now it looks like way more than that will likely have Lyme disease-like long term health issues.
Vaccines have basically made it possible for us to live the way we do without death and disease being nearly as common as they otherwise would be. As well, antibiotics have made it possible to treat many diseases that would devastate our lives otherwise (i do think that antibiotics are prescribed way too much and they are wasted on livestock and as a result make human use obsolete) Vaccines are also beneficial because they allow our body's immune system to cure the disease on it's own. Would you want your child to have suffered from polio or hepatitis and be debilitated for the rest of their life? I wouldn't want that for anyone.
People in rich countries have the luxury of having grown up and lived in a society that through vaccines has virtually done away with many of the diseases that plagued our past society. You look around and say, "why should we take these vaccines when no one around us is sick??" (just like people are currently denying the CV pandemic because they claim no one they know has gotten it yet, despite the hospitals being full of patients in many parts of the country) But they aren't sick because the diseases mostly can't thrive because of herd immunity brought about by vaccines. But now more and more outbreaks of measles and other diseases are happening because antivaxxers refuse to vaccinate. Other people's vulnerable children are put as risk if they are unable to take the vaccine for some reason. And their own children can get measles and die or become debilitated from it.
If you grew up in a society where there were hundreds of thousands of people crippled and dying of disease every day, you would feel differently about vaccines, and the proof is that people in these places embrace vaccines. Anti vaxxers are by and large a first world phenomenon, because they have the luxury of being antivax. People in third world countries experience the devastation of these diseases first hand and are grateful to have a treatment. For instance, measles, which might not seem like a big deal to Americans because it's has a death rate of .2% (although it can have other long term effects in a much larger percentage of the population) can have a death rate of 25% in third world countries, and it is the leading cause of blindness in African children.
I'm all for reducing human population, particularly of those in countries like the US that consume so much of the world's resources, but I don't think the answer is to kill off the people that already exist. I think the answer is to stop having children in the first place. I'm all for implementing the intelligent technology we develop to make our lives better, just not at the expense of the natural world.
I'm always confused to find people who are interested in sustainability and environmental issues but believe in supernatural things or pseudoscience. I've never understood how these things fit together, but it is so common. Maybe it's just a culture of bucking the mainstream culture, so you have to embrace everything that is "alternative". In this interpretation mainstream medicine is akin to the fossil fuel culture, I guess. But I see a consistency in supporting science, which is not supposed to have any absolutes and which is willing to change in the light of new evidence. Religion and dogma are not like this at all and they lead to ignorance. And skepticism just because we don't like the facts makes no sense at all, but is basically the new American culture.
I'm not saying that I totally trust mainstream medicine and I think it's always good to keep studying and improving on things, but much of the anti vax movement in this country came from a now debunked study published in the Lancet in the early 2000s linking autism to vaccines. People grabbed onto this lie and have never let it go despite all the new information and the retraction of that study.
Hardcore Sustainable so much for mother nature and the natural way of thing eh? How disappointing... unsubscribe to this way of thinking and it’s disappointing to see someone in your lifestyle has this view. Very sad you buy into this, I expected a more educated view from someone at dancing rabbit 🐇
@@tamimckee2513 Hmm. I guess the open mindedness just doesn't exist in that perspective. Have you ever sat by and watched a love one die of something that could be easily cured? Are you willing to do that? Or have you just never had to be in that position.
I'm guessing you didn't really read my whole comment because you responded so quickly and without any discussion at all. But this is dogma. There is no discussion.
Hardcore Sustainable I did read your entire thoughtful reply and I’m sorry if you felt attacked or if I was being disrespectful of your different view. I was just sincerely shocked you had this view and that’s all I was saying. It was very disappointing to me. I have been researching cob housing and sustainable living / alternative living and came across your channel and was just shocked you had bought into the mask and vaccine hoax. It’s just my opinion. I respect other people’s views so I wear a mask in public for THEIR sake. I believe the earth has virus and sickness in hand, people die and it’s natural, healthy people survive. It’s just my view. And yes I have watched several people die, naturally... from the view you are presenting they could have injected themselves with poison to be technically “alive” but some believe in natural ways and when your end comes you accept it instead of live in fear of dying.
Thank you for taking the time to type out your thoughtful reply. It’s very interesting and it’s good to know more about those living in the community and their individual views. Thank you for taking the time to explain this. You made some incorrect assumptions about me as well, ;-) I read fast is all....
@@tamimckee2513 thanks for your thoughtful comment. I'm sorry if I made assumptions about some things about you. I was more asking questions and stating what I know of antivaxxers I have met. Not a lot of them share your idea that people should just die naturally and not interfere. They are more of the "vaccines are poison and cause autism" group and they are actually convinced the vaccines will do more harm than the virus or bacteria the vaccine prevents. I don't believe there is any evidence that the harm a vaccine might do outweighs the benefits to the individual and society.
I wonder if you ever go to the hospital for anything or try to cure yourself of any ailments. It seems like if you took your perspective seriously, you would just let yourself die if you got a simple infection. I've known people that had a similar perspective but when it happened to them they went even as far as to get chemotherapy to stay alive. I'd like to think I would never go that far unless I had a very treatable cancer because I do believe chemotherapy is poison (which it is). But I have to accept that I don't think I would personally want to die from coronavirus, or take my chances of getting it if I could avoid it. I guess if I were a real hardcore environmentalist I'd kill myself to stop consuming resources. But I'm more realistic and accept the things I'm hopelessly dependent on.
I don't see vaccines as very unnatural. I could take some medicinal herb to treat an ailment, but I don't really see much difference between doing that and taking a small amount of a dead virus so that my immune system is triggered to save my life. It's just using human ingenuity in the same way we would identify a plant and connect it with a treatment for some ailment. It does take a lot more effort to get the vaccine figured out, but it is questionably less natural.
In the broader philosophical argument, you bring up some conundrums in how far you take the "acting naturally" thing. Is driving a car "natural"? Is using a computer "natural"? Using cars makes it far more likely you will be killed in an auto accident, so is wearing a seatbelt then unnatural? Are you defying your "intended fate" by wearing a seat belt? If you were going to avoid death "naturally" would you wear a seatbelt, or would you refuse to drive a car?
I'm glad that even though you don't have faith in the science around masks or just don't want people to wear them because it's a way of preventing the spread of the virus, you still wear one. If people weren't in danger of killing others by not taking precautions I'd be all for people making a personal choice about what they do in response to the virus. But as long as they didn't expect to use a hospital or put any additional burden on society through their decision. As long as they were able to keep all the consequences for their actions personal. But I don't know how they would do that except by dying in their home, or being totally asymptomatic and never passing the virus on to others.
These videos could be so cool but he is a very negative person!
In what way?