It has been a month since I last wrote this column and it has been a very full one. Michael and I made

a long planned-for trip to visit his family in Italy. We flew directly to Milan from Chicago on January 8th and then took the train down the length of the Italian peninsula before crossing to Sicily on the train ferry. The train then went down the eastern coast of the island before turning inland. On the final leg of our trip we even got to see Mt Etna erupt!

Villarosa, where we spent most of our visit, is a town of about four thousand people and is very close to Enna, a city which was founded by the Greeks three thousand years ago. Both sides of Michael's family are from there and his father returned to Villarosa after living for many years in Southern California.

Michael's last visit to Sicily was twenty-eight years ago and much has changed. All of Italy is much more prosperous, particularly since the introduction of the new euro currency has brought inflation under control. His brother, sister and cousins are now grown and many have families of their own. The status of women has improved and they no longer have to be chaperoned when they leave the house.

Since we used to be market growers, the thing we were most impressed with was the incredible quality of all the food we saw for sale and ate ourselves. There are not many supermarkets and most people buy their food fresh from street vendors,open-air markets or small specialty shops. It was also citrus season in Sicily and we had as much as we wanted of tangerines, clementines and different kinds of oranges.

IAt the end of our visit, we again took the train north to Rome and then overnight to Milan. We flew back to Chicago on the 23rd. The arctic cold was like a slap in the face when we got off the plane at O'Hare. Not as balmy as Sicily! The trip was a wonderful experience, but it was nice to be home again.

We were not the only travellers this last month. Laird made an extended trip to the West Coast from January 8th to January 21st. After a couple of days at home, he left again on the 24th with Sue to attend oversight meetings for the FIC in Tennessee over the weekend. The following week he and Sue went to Chicago for a family event. Stan, Gigi and Cory went down to East Wind Community in south central Missouri on the 17th to do a labor exchange and got back on the 30th. Cory had lots of little girls to play with while she was there. This past week Stan did another inspection trip from Sunday to Thursday. He did organic inspections of processors(including a coffee roaster)in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.

Our friends Kris, Mary Ann and Will, who were with us at sorghum season, came for a visit late in January. They were on their way back to the East Coast after finishing a visitor period at East Wind and spent a few days with us. They have all been accepted as members at East Wind and will be moving there in the near future, so they will be closer to us now and we hopefully will be able to see them more often than would otherwise be the case.

Last Wednesday Jon, Angelina and Zoe became our newest members.This brings our membership up to twelve adults and three children. There is definitely a feeling of abundance on the farm these days. We will be having our winter retreat this coming week and thinking about our plans for the coming year.

This past weekend, as a lead-in to the retreat, we hosted a workshop on Non-Violent Communication.

Rita Herzog, an experienced NVC trainer, came from Cleveland to lead it. We were joined by most of the members of Dancing Rabbit for the first session on Friday and it was held at the Community Center in Rutledge. Thank you to the Rabbits for providing lunch that day. The Saturday and Sunday sessions were held at Sandhill. It was very interesting and we enjoyed having Rita as our guest.

We also had a visit from Sol's parents, Brian and Susan, this weekend. They helped her out with childcare for Skyler during the workshop, but I don't think they regarded it as work. It was nice to see them again.