A Steward moved into his house in early 2016. Also in January of 2016 we learned that the plan for the Demetral Bike Path would go through the area where 5 of our houses would be placed. The City of Madison has worked with us and revamped the bike path plans so we can house 5 people. We geared up for our second annual plant sale a little earlier. A volunteer made shelves in our big south facing windows, making a greenhouse that would allow us to do significantly more planting. With the increased storage space, a litte more knowledge, and lots of help from the UW Service Learning class, our 2016 Spring Plant sale was extremely successful, selling about 600 heirloom and organic plants. Tiny Libraries were the theme of Spring and Summer of 2016! We built 2 custom ordered Tiny Libraries and another one for the Fall Fundraiser. We also built and installed our first bat house, had a mosaics class, and perfected our cutting board and rolling pin making skills. We sold almost 40 Wisconsin shaped cutting boards throughout the holiday 2016 season. During this year we had visitors from all over the country almost every two weeks. They mostly included people who wanted to build villages in their towns and cities. There were a couple of documentaries produced solely about OM Village, and we had quite a few journalists visit. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate! While one of the houses very near to the Village sold four days after going up for sale, we lost our near neighbors and good supporters (this dispelled the myth that having formerly unhoused people in the neighborhood lowers property value and attractability). Occupy Madison became co-sponsors of Sustainable Saturday and signed on to the Racial Tipping Point Campaign. In addition to receiving another tiny home from Lafollette High School, East High School built and donated a tiny home. A collection of poems about what home means was published and the poets read their works at our Fall Fundraiser. The book is for sale in the Village Store. We won a grant from Nature’s Path Gardens for Good to build a greenhouse. Inpro donated a luxury tiny house that will be auctioned off in 2017. A documentary, Walk a Mile in Their Shoes, included one of the Stewards of OM Village and a couple of OM members, allowing OM to form a strong bond with Justice & Justice Media. 2016 has been a year of fine tuning and relationship building.
