We have had a "sewing bee" in progress here for the past couple of weeks. Jo made herself a dress

and a really cute one for Renay. She is now working on a dress for her mom Elke as a birthday surprise. Elke lives in New York so I'm not giving away the secret by mentioning it in the column. Our intern Susie also made herself a dress and is sewing curtains for the windows at our Dharma residence . Gigi whipped together curtains for Stan's room recently, too. It's nice to have all this creative energy in the group. I have a couple of projects in mind that I want to do and hope I can make the time soon to tackle them.

Speaking of projects, Bekka has been making a braided rug to go in the living room at the White House. She often works on it during our meetings(we all like to do handwork or other projects while we discuss community business). She was saying the other day that it is going to be too big a project to lug around soon. I guess she will have to find something else to do at meetings.

Laird and Jo have been busy with some woodworking projects while she is here. They built a new bed frame for the remodeled room at Sugar Shack. Jo refinished our kitchen table and they are now making curtain rods and holders for the new curtains at Dharma.

Laird attended a conference at Amana, Iowa from June 29 to July 1. It was held by the International Communal Studies Association and was attended by people from all over the world. On the 28th we gave a tour to a group as part of the ICSA pre-conference activities. We had a visit later that same afternoon from a party of people who were travelling together to Amana. The group included Diana Christian, editor of Communities Magazine, and members of communities in California, Tennessee, Japan, Norway, Germany, and Australia. I also gave them a tour of Sandhill.

After the conference was over, we hosted a Canadian visitor, David, who had been one of the presenters there. David has been teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario and will become a professor of environmental planning at the University of Northern British Columbia in January. He spent five days with us before heading back north.

We had an overnight visit on July 6 from Dave and Jeanne, a couple from Wisconsin. Dave has recently retired as a business instructor at a community college and Jeanne teaches learning-disabled students at the middle school level. They are interested in starting a cohousing community in their area.

Last Sunday a long-expected visitor, Christopher, finally pedalled up to our door. He started his bicycle trip in Indiana and had been delayed. He is hoping to begin graduate school at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana in the near future. Chris will be with us until late July.

We also had a couple of guests arrive by bicycle yesterday, although they didn't come from as far away as Chris. Susie's friends from Kirksville, Julie and Zachary, are here for the weekend. Julie attended our anniversary party in May but it is Zach's first time at Sandhill. They will head back home on Monday morning.

Julie and her grandson Eric, who visited Sandhill three years ago, are here again to spend some time with us. They arrived Thursday evening. They live at White Hawk, a community in northern Texas.

There has been lots of other activity at the farm in the past two weeks. We have been harvesting onions and the first potatoes. A crew pulled the garlic crop this morning and it is all tied up in bunches and hanging in the Horse Barn. We have been doing plenty of food processing and Kristen made our first batch of pickles this week. There have been morning field weeding sessions when it isn't too wet. We also completed our annual organic inspection this past Thursday. We are certified through the new Missouri Department of Agriculture organic program.

We had our mid-year retreat this Friday and Saturday. We met Friday afternoon to go over our finances and see if we are meeting our goals so far this year. Saturday we devoted our morning meeting to group process issues and the afternoon one to interpersonal dynamics in the community. Cecil from Dancing Rabbit facilititated the Saturday meetings for us.

After we finished the meetings, we had an early celebration yesterday evening for Jo's seventeeth birthday. It is actually on the 23rd, but she won't be able to be here at that time. We invited the Rabbits to go to Kahoka with us for roller skating and a dessert potluck.

A group of us went to Arbela the previous Sunday for dinner at the Catfish Place and fireworks afterward. The fireworks display was impressive and it was nice to see the big crowd that came out for the show.