Trading Work, Finding Home: A Dancing Rabbit Update

Back in the spring of 2020, I came to Dancing Rabbit as a work exchanger (called wexers at DR) for the Dairy Co-op. Milking cows and goats, making cheese, and eating collectively in an off-grid kitchen, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start my life at Dancing Rabbit. While the wexer program has ebbed and flowed in my four years at DR, 2024 was easily the biggest, with 27 wexers. This allowed us to establish a beautiful and productive community garden, plant 250 chestnut trees, and start a new kitchen co-op, which has been a crucial landing place for many new residents. 

First, we’re coming up on an important fundraising deadline: December 3, which is Giving Tuesday. Because of the outsized impact of the work exchange and community garden programs, we’ve decided to use 100% of donations received from Giving Tuesday to run and expand these programs!

To support accessible pathways to regenerative living and community-scale, sustainable food systems!  
 

Our goal is to raise $8,000 by Giving Tuesday, December 3. This would be enough for us to hire and train a community garden manager, and fully cover the cost of running our work exchange program in 2025. In future years, we expect the sale of produce from the garden to offset these costs, but we’re not there yet!

More about wexing, from some recent wexers: 

“I have no words to describe the incredible experience I had at DR. It exceeded my expectations. I learned many things, such as how to make a variety of artisanal cheeses, artisanal ice cream, and many other things. I also helped with permaculture by harvesting the food we ate. This is great, from the soil to the table. I also helped with the construction of several clay projects, and I helped with whatever was needed in the ecovillage. I can honestly say that it was one of the best times of my life… thank you DR.”   

Daniel “Puchi” Cruz, wexer, 2024.

“I loved being able to get to know and work with so many people of different backgrounds and areas of experience. I’ve cultivated friendships this summer that I suspect could last the rest of my life.” 

Mosscap, wexer turned resident, 2024.

“What was most impactful was seeing how much it seems like DR residents care about the promotion/well-being/sustainability of DR. The togetherness of working together everyday. Everyone seemed to be strongly intrinsically motivated to work on the land/structures.” 

Austin French Johnson, wexer, 2024.

For much of my adult life, I’ve worked for free; living out of a backpack, I traveled around South, Central, and (to a lesser extent) North America staying at small farms and communities, trading my labor for room, board, and knowledge. The knowledge I was after was not only of the practical kind, such as how to raise animals for food, build things with what's around me, establish and nurture perennial and resilient ecosystems, but most importantly, the knowledge of how to live differently. To live connected to the natural rhythm of the seasons, in a close knit community, in the present, and in a manner which minimizes the role of money in everyday interactions. All while consciously engaging with, and resisting, the screen obsessed, hyper consumerist, and fossil fuel addicted behemoth of modernity. The main vehicle that enabled these many transformative experiences, and led me to where I am now, was the work exchange.

Thanks to various websites, word of mouth, and some chance encounters, I’ve been able to learn from some fascinating people doing incredible things. From a community that teaches mushroom cultivation courses in Guatemala, a reforestation project in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, to a highly diversified communal farm in Vermont. 

Left to right: Vermont, Guatemala, and Ecuador

Doing work exchange is also how I landed at Dancing Rabbit. There were three main factors which led me to DR: 

1. I wanted to experience a large and established ecovillage where the majority of the population are not volunteers. Most prior communities I stayed in were fairly small, typically 4-10 permanent residents with 2-15 volunteers. 
2. I wanted to experience an ecovillage project in the US. I spent most of the previous few years exploring projects in Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala.
3. I wanted to work with grazing animals. I was, and still am, enamored with silvopasture: the intentional integration of trees into grazing land. Its many local benefits include shade and protection for livestock, diversified nutrition, multiple yields, erosion control and climate resilience. If adopted globally, silvopasture practices have the potential to sequester 26-43 gigatons of carbon by 2050 (source: drawdown.org/solutions/silvopasture).

Landing at Dancing Rabbit as a wexer was the perfect way to start exploring life in this new and intriguing place. It gave me purpose, meaningful work to do, a social scene to plug in to, and lots of space and time to learn about the ins and outs of DR and consider whether or not it would become my new home. For many people, being a wexer is the best way to experience DR. 

Wexers have the opportunity to learn many skills by doing: cheese making, organic gardening, food preservation, natural building, tree planting, land restoration, and the many everyday skills associated with a land based, communal lifestyle. There are also many “soft” skills which are both taught and absorbed through direct participation: consensus, nonviolent communication, and cooperation on many levels. One of the most intangible yet impactful experiences is that of participating in a project where people are consciously choosing to resist apathy and despair about our future and make something better by reconnecting to ways of living which have roots in humanity's deep past.

It’s also free, making it an essential piece in maintaining the economic accessibility of our project. Also to this end, our community has no buy-in fee, a fairly cheap cost of living, many cooperatives which share the cost and labor of things like cooking, owning vehicles, maintaining common infrastructure, growing food and raising animals. There are many ways to reduce one’s cost of living by being thrifty, doing odd jobs for the land trust and community, growing your own food, and generally helping people out with stuff. Landing here as a wexer gives folks a unique window into these types of opportunities, often by doing that work directly.

A robust wexer program also benefits the ecovillage itself greatly. It helps build a younger, vibrant and more diverse community, which is felt both by our community members, and the many guests that visit us every year. We receive tangible help on a variety of projects, unique skill sets and perspectives, and added motivation to get work done on some things which may not have gotten the attention otherwise. It also helps to grow our village, and thus our influence on the wider world; increasing the awareness that rebellion can be joyful and based on acting as though the society we want to manifest is already here.

Contra dancin’ in the streets

To me, this gets to the core of what makes Dancing Rabbit special. Since I’ve lived here, there’s been a perpetual conversation on what our shared vision is. What are we trying to accomplish by living in clay houses, composting our poop, growing our food, and sitting in lengthy meetings every week out in rural Missouri? While there’s still healthy debate in the community, I’ve always felt that we’re laying the groundwork for a transformation towards a society rooted in deep and sustaining relationship with the land and the people, plants, fungi and animals we share it with. At what time and scale that society manifests remains to be seen, but it will come. For those whose lives have intersected with Dancing Rabbit, whether through living here, visiting, work exchanging, or following us online, it feels nearer every day.

If this vision resonates with you, please consider donating to our nonprofit, the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture.

In community,

Eric Mease

Villager // Land Steward // Development Lead

Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture at