Every Monday I post Real Life Minimalists, a profile of one of my readers in their own words. If you’d like to participate, click here for details. (Note: the schedule is now full until June — but if you don’t mind waiting, feel free to send me your submission!)
Today, I’m excited to feature Brian, who tells us about his experiences living in an ecovillage. After reading about his community–and how it’s tailor-made for the minimalist lifestyle–I’m dreaming about moving in!
Brian writes:
Almost three years ago now my partner and I left the wonderful, expensive cacophony that is New York City behind. We packed up and moved to to the rolling prairies of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in rural northeast Missouri. I had lived there a decade earlier as an intern in college, and eventually couldn’t continue to pass up the amazing possibilities for creative simple living it offers. Dancing Rabbit is a village (currently about 65 people, looking to grow to 500-1000) that attempts to demonstrate cooperative, sustainable living through projects like renewable energy, organic agriculture, and cooperative resource sharing.
It is built from the ground up for ecologically grounded minimalism! I did not buy the land for my home, because I can lease at very reasonable rates from our cooperatively owned land trust. I don’t need a car because our membership agreements forbid private vehicle ownership. Instead, I use the cars from our vehicle cooperative at $.60 a mile, and have the huge benefit of having someone else deal with the upkeep and insurance. What’s more, there is a real ethic around sharing, so people pool together for rides all the time. Additionally we have a common building with free movies and parties, and a commonly owned, eco friendly commercial washing machine.
This last year I was able to purchase and put the finishing touches on my eco friendly home (pictured below). It is a strawbale home, with reclaimed wood from a local demolished barn, and natural earthen plasters. The furniture is either from the local flea market (the yellow chair was $2) or handmade by friends from wood sustainably and locally harvested. Next year I am placing a greenhouse on the south side, and because of the large amounts of insulation and thermal mass I often don’t need a fire even when it is below freezing. The electricity comes from two small solar panels and the water from a cistern with rain catchment, so I have no utility bills. I am very grateful that I was able to pay cash for the home with less than one years earnings, so I have no mortgage.
I currently pay my bills by running a web consulting firm specializing in search optimization, and write and do the tech work on my own blog and eco comparison shopping store, sustainablog.org. Additionally, I help mid sized family businesses like Kranichs Jeweler’s optimize their work flow and websites, while also moving in more eco directions. My sweetheart Lily, a trained classicist, makes her income as one of the worlds best Latin Tutors, working on Skype with an international clientele.
It is an exciting way of life for me because I am able to live a rich lifestyle, with great access to travel, culture and nature, for under $20,000 a year, all using less than 10% of the resources (gasoline, electricity, farmland, etc.) of the average American. I kid with my friends that I gave up city life to become Thoreau with an iPad. In coming years, I hope to grow more of my own food, and scale back on books and eating out, both of which I can be, er, maxamilist about. I would love to answer any questions about eco minimalism, so ask away in the comments if you are interested!
Brian's home
{If you’d like to learn more about minimalist living, please consider reading my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
Oh my goodness what an amazing place. I am in awe of this wonderful community. That’s for sharing.
Moving to a small community with local subsistence is a great step forward in reducing human impact on local and global environment. I wish that I could find those synched minds here in Brazil.
Brian, Dancing Rabbit village looks very cool. I would like to live in a place like this when my kids leave home. I think I will come for a visit this summer and check it out.
I love your home, it looks so simple and cozy! I think I saw the dancing rabbit community featured in Morgan Spurlock’s 30 days, is that correct? If yes, I was very impressed to see what you guys do there.
Wow, what a beautiful home!
A tad bit jealous ;)
The only problem with this idea is that you’d have to actually be able to get along with other people–all that sharing. I could never do this.
What a wonderful house and community! My husband and I will be up visiting Findhorn near Inverness in Scotland next week, which I belive runs along similar lines. Being a bit of a loner, my only problem would be getting along well with so many other people. Do you have lots of meetings and ‘discussions’ to decide which direction the community will go in?
I have never heard of this community – what a great idea!
Your home sounds wonderful, though I agree with some of the other comments that, while I do enjoy being around people some of the time, I also crave lots of time alone or privately with my husband and kids. My dad always joked that he wanted to be a hermit with a wife and children, and I have learned that I am a lot like him! The village sounds like a huge step in the right direction, however — lucky you!
I visited the Dancing Rabbit website, and it looks like a very appealing community.
I noticed one of the covenants specifies no fossil-fueled refrigeration, and I’m just curious about the logistics of that. Brian, do you use a solar-powered model or something similar, or do you simply go without?
My utilities company used to offer residential wind power for an additional fee, but that program was discontinued last year. So I would like to find ways to radically reduce our household consumption of electricity.
Brian, as a fan of DR, I find some of the out-of-date aspects of the DR website(s) frustrating, especially as I am, er, newly locationally convenient and looking to visit, certainly interested in some of the workshops, and very serious in wanting to know more about the nitty gritty of living at DR. The internet is a scary place for private information, but I do wish there was some way we could talk. Miss Minimalist want to play email matchmaker? =)
@R – Don’t worry R. My family found out about ecovillages and intentional communities last fall and Dancing Rabbit was on our list of places to visit right off the bat. They are true to their word that they will email you back, the process just doesn’t go as fast maybe as amazon.com or ebay. :) We are scheduled to make our visit next month and we are extremely excited about the new life that such a place may have in store for us. And throughout the process, we’ve been able to ask a lot of questions. We’ve made facebook friends with several members and I suggest you do something similar. It’s helped us in making some connections and we’ve been able to ask them about all the many things that we’ve wanted to know. Right now, we’re just sitting on go, waiting for our date to arrive so that we can spend 3 weeks making sure we’ve found our new home. I think we have. :)
@ Mac – good ideas. Not a big fan of facebook, but I hadn’t thought of looking there. Thanks for the encouragement! Glad to hear DR lives up to the hype. =)
What a beautiful home, I want to curl up in that bed. BTW all you minimalists out there, I just finished reading the book “The Last American Man” by Elizabeth Gilbert and am highly recommending it. If you’re reading this blog than I bet you’d love the book.
Wow – your story is so unique and inspirational! Thank you for sharing it. Your home is beautiful.
Oh my!!! I love your place!!! What a lovely place to live in. PLUS, I love your house!!! So cute!!! I’m still single and wishing to marry someone who would love to live in a rural place. This place sounds perfect. Because I’ve really been dreaming to live in one! And I almost fell out of my chair when I read you live in a rural place and then I’m totally left speechless when I saw your cute house and the Dancing Rabbit place!!! Wonderful!!!
@ all – thanks for the compliments on the home. I had a lot of help.
@ Rodrigo, perhaps you could start your search here in the global intentional communities directory http://directory.ic.org/intentional_communities_Brazil
@Kim, it is a king size eco memory foam mattress, and I love it!
@R we are working on a web overhaul. you can mail me at toomey8 (at) gmail . com
@Happy Clam, yes, we were on 30 Days!
@ Jude, “getting along” can be challenging, its true, but overall I find it rewarding. Also, the savings mean I need to “get along” at work less, so there are positive aspects to the trade as well.
@ Fawn, you can find more about the visitors program and tours, as well as the Bed and breakfast on the website.
@Tracy, cooling is done by solar powered energy efficient fridges (sunfrost and sundanzer), and we are looking into other methods as well (solar thermal ammonia cycle, for instance). Our cars currently run on biodiesel (with, sadly, a touch of petrol diesel in the winters that we feel squeamish about) and we are looking to move to electric.
@ Julia, there are a lot of meetings, its true ;).
What a wonderful way to live! Some friends and I have been planning to live this way some ways down the road. I hope that ours will work out as well as yours is!!
It sounds really cool. I just couldn’t live without running water and toilets. Aqueducts anyone?
My friend Sky went up and did a workshop weekend at Dancing Rabbit and she loved it. I never made it up there but when I’m back in Arkansas I’ll have to swing in and experience it.
How beautiful Brian! You make me a little jealous. We wanted to put up a straw bale home just south of you (Arkansas) but got scared off because straw bale wasn’t recommended for moist climates. (I later found a gorgeous straw bale structure just down the road from us at a community homeschooling school proving it can be done!).
Did you build it yourself, and did you have help with it? Have you had any moisture issues? I love the curved ceiling.
I could go on forever here with questions, but I’ll contain myself. :)
Oh wow, I think this is the most amazing home I have seen/read about in a while. I love the way it looks and I love the way the village functions. I’m amazed and very inspired, honestly. Thank you, Brian!
Wow, just wow. What is the catch to living in this community? Lol! Sign me up. I love the idea of sharing and being a close-knit community. Brian can you see any negatives to living at Dancing Rabbit? Great post!
Carly
By the way, I adore your home. Very bohemian/creative.
Your home is beautiful. We stay where we are because all the kids and grandkids are very close. I am happy to see all the experiments in building materials going on now. Again, it gives me a lot of hope for the future when I see all the ecologically sound decisions people are making.
I save the comics to ship to the armed forces. Plastic bags go to my son for his dog and cat. We have a bag for the local food pantry. Plastic lids go to the preschool. Some plastic containers become planters, the rest are recycled. More needs to go. I just thought of more things to give away.
I use detergent caps to root plant cuttings. Our recycling won’t take them. In the 14 years we’ve lived in our condo, we have never turned on the heat. Even in Chicago, a south facing window keeps us warm in winter. Most of our furniture is second hand, either from relatives or from house sales. Some of our friends and relatives are financially helping adult children.We are fortunate that we’ve never had to do that.
When I see some workers pulling up plants to thin them out, I ask for them and put them in cottage cheese cartons in dirt. Then I give them away to put in other people’s yards. At a rummage sale, I saw pots of plants for sale, if I needed some, I would divide them up and spread them around. There are so many things people throw out which could be used many more times.