I''m attempting to assign ActiveRecord Observers to some of my models, specified in config/environment.rb like so, config.active_record.observers = :presentation_observer, :asset_observer, :tag_observer My models use plugins which extend ActiveRecord::Base, including Sebastian Kanthak''s file_column Attempting to boot mongrel yields: c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.4/lib/active_record/base.rb:1129:in `method_missing'': undefined method `file_column'' for Video:Class (NoMethodError) This seems to indicate the plugins are not yet mixed-in when the Observers examine the ActiveRecord-descended models. Implementing dummy stubs in config/environment.rb for these methods eliminate the errors, but don''t really seem like the right way to do this. Anyone else come up with an elegant way to get this going?