The theme of the past two weekends has been anniversaries. Our sister community in south central Missouri, East Wind, celebrated its thirtieth Land Day on May 1. This marks the day that the community moved on to their land after arriving from Massachusetts. The community had been founded there the year before.

The East Winders threw a party that began on Friday and lasted through Sunday. Michael and I are former members there and went to join in the festivities. We drove down Thursday and spent the night at our daughter's place in Pomona. We had a nice visit with Melina, Matt and our granddaughter Chloe. The next day Michael and I took Chloe over with us to East Wind. Melina had to go to school and work and Matt was setting up the sound system for the East Wind event and took a van full of equipment over earlier in the day. We spent the rest of the weekend there.

Despite the often heavy rain, the party was a great success. The music venue was moved to their large hay barn and there was a lot of socializing in the dining room in between fantastic meals. It was great to see everyone and catch up on folks' lives since we all lived together.

This weekend marked the thirtieth anniversary of Sandhill Farm as a community. Laird, Ann and another couple moved to our land on May 8, 1974. This made our annual May Day celebration a very special one. Guests, including former interns and members, came from Columbia, St. Louis,

Fairfield, IA, Mount Vernon, IA, Duluth, MN and Savannah, GA. We hosted local friends and, of course, the Dancing Rabbit crew. Both Ceilee and Jo also came to be with us, with Jo flying in from New Hampshire.

There was a Maypole Dance at a new, more level location and the Rabbits put on one of their cheerleading "spectacles" for the crowd. The Dancing Rabbit chorus, with help from Sandhill folks and guests, performed some great songs. There was a Sandhill Trivia game with seventy questions thought up by Laird covering our whole thirty years(sample question: "What was the color of Sandhill's first cow?; answer: "Blue roan").

Folks did some swimming after the Maypole and then we had a yummy potluck supper on the front porch. The evening was spent in hanging out, doing a sweat at our sweat lodge, and jamming with some of the musicians in the crowd. Our friends Ron and Lou from Gorin treated us to some of their original music, including a great song about Ella Ewing.

Laird cooked brunch for everyone, Sandhillians and those staying over, this morning. Sunday is being devoted to one our marathon game days and there is a group playing board games around the dining table as I write.

May 8th was also Skyler's second birthday and there were birthday cakes for both him and Sandhill baked by his mom. Skyler has really had quite a birthday this year. He had a cake here before he and his parents went to Baltimore, another one at his grandparents, and the one Saturday at the party. Someone asked him if he was excited about his birthday and his response was the word "cake".

On April 27th, we celebrated the birthday of our intern, Jayd, who has now reached the ripe old age of twenty two. We served birthday cake at lunch that day and then Jayd's friends at Dancing Rabbit had another one that evening over there after a game of ultimate frisbee, choir practice and dinner.

Despite all the swirl around both anniversaries, we have been getting on with our normal life at Sandhill, too. Crops are being planted at a fast rate. Bekka and Jayd helped me get my first group of lettuce transplants in the ground Wednesday. There is ongoing transplanting of brassica crops going on and folks have been helping Michael as they have time. The gardeners have also been busy working on their various beds since it is already time to thin and weed some of them. There have been "gos" to move along some of the tasks that can be daunting if done alone(weeding asparagus, for example). There are always the multitude of seedlings that have to be watered several times a day if one is at a loss for something to do.

Stan is busy with his field work and the bees. Amazingly, some of the crop lands are still too wet to work easily despite the dry spring. The long time we had snow on the ground this past winter probably accounts for that.

Gigi has finished up the wood trim that needed to be done on the Sugar Shack room remodel and it feels good to have seen that project through. We have also been dealing with all the routine maintenance jobs that come up here, from cranky door knobs to dewinterizing our buildings.

Gigi has also been putting in some time on our landscaping, with nice results already. A large planting of blue lobelia has just been put in front of the White House and beds have been cleaned up

and had wood chips spread on them. Michael and I brought back some herb starts for her from the garden at East Wind and they have been added to the herb garden in the orchard.

We have had lots of mushrooms on the menu the past week or so. Gigi and Renay found a nice batch of morels and our shitakes have gone crazy after the rain last week. We have had mushroom soup, mushrooms and homemade pasta, mushroom ragout, mushroom omelets, etc. One of the prizes in our trivia contest was a bag of shitakes.

Laird returned from his long trip all over the country on May 5th. He rode back from the Fellowship organizational meetings in Colorado with friends Bill, Barbara, and their son Ellwood, Lotus and her daughter Emma and Tony from Dancing Rabbit.

They stopped on the way in Kansas City to pick up a guest Susan, who had flown in from Georgia, and in Columbia to drop off Lotus and Emma. Bill, Barbara and Ellwood visited with us from Wednesday to Friday before going on to Chicago. Cedar, Jess and Skyler got back from Maryland on Friday, just in time for the party.