3One of the best things about joining together as The Motherline is the collective trust and energy that comes from our weekly movement practice. We find this energy is an amazing boost to us in our day-to-day lives within our families and on our homesteads, but also a group we are working to use some of this energy and connection for community outreach. Our community programs all center around making better lives for kids, particularly through arts practices, gardening practices, and self-care, and also around planet protection.
Cultivate Kids
Cultivate Kids is a hands-on garden project that brings local children and teens together each week at the Cave Junction Farmers Market. Cultivate Kids started in 2019, to share earth-friendly garden practices, to teach sustainable agriculture, and to help cultivate a sense of place. The Cultivate Kids program has always been about fun, and connection to nature and wonder. Each week, up to 20 local youth, ranging in age from 3 through 16, come together to work on their community garden, with older participants taking on leadership roles with the younger participants. You can learn more about the Cultivate Kids program, including the program schedule, on the Cave Junction Farmers’ Market website.
Mentor Webs
The Mentor Webs are The Motherline’s newest program for improving connectedness between the generations, linking kids, teens, and women together into “webs” of support. Each “web” consists of three members: one from each age group. The webs meet monthly to check in with each other, share a meal, and enjoy an activity together. The kids benefit from the leadership of the adults, and the adults enjoy sharing a nurturing relationship with a child who is not their own (especially since many of our Motherliners are not biologically mothers themselves!). As the webs have grown in their care for each other, some webs are beginning to meet in-between the monthly group sessions, and there is a tangible feeling of added support for the participants in all the age groups. The Menor Web program will be doubling in size in its second year, as more and more requests are received from kids and adults who would like to be linked into a web!
Rural ReciProsperity
Rural Reciprosperity is an organizing principle, or guiding compass, to bring the Illinois Valley’s broad range of service organizations and small businesses into greater cooperation with each other. Based on the wonderful quote from “Braiding Sweetgrass” that “All Flourishing is Mutual”, we are working together to increase economic opportunities within our valley, by improving our stewardship of our people and our natural environment.
Our founding organizations came together in 2023 to envision change for the Valley that included meaningful job opportunities and mentorships for teens, improved prosperity for local small businesses, and targeted environmental actions. With a cadre of the Valley’s movers and shakers all at the table together for Rural ReciProsperity, we embody the strength and energy needed for accomplishing this work.
Our most upcoming Rural ReciProsperity event is a free tire day here in Cave Junction. Multiple local organizations are working together to organize the event, and to help run the event. Thanks to generous support from the Josephine County Solid Waste Agency, we will be cleaning up the enviroment (getting hundreds of old tires removed from the watershed!!) while working together, spending a little extra money at local businesses (food for volunteers, advertising), sharing free T-shirts at the event, and even a donation to Cultivate Kids at the Cave Junction Farmers’ Market, as a thank you for CJFM sponsoring the event. It’s a big circle of goodness!
PATHs: Purposeful Action To Heal
PATH(s): Purposeful Actions To Heal, gives us a chance to act locally to move from extractive to reparative practices. The Motherline recognizes that the practice of our art and the practice of our homesteading sustainable lifestyle skills all depend on having a healthy home to practice in. Many modern activities are deeply degrading the air, soil, and water that all of Earth’s life depends on. Motherline therefore includes a path of action, to work to stop some of the worst impacts, and to help remedy others. This is our Purposeful Action To Heal, our PATH, and we are so grateful to be able to share some of the ReciProsperity back to the Earth.
Our annual free tire recycling day is one of our PATHs, having removed around 6,000 tires from our ecosystem in it’s first two years of operation!
The Clean Sweep is our current ginormous PATHs project – Motherline is now working on picking up ALL of the trash in the public woodlands of the Illinois River watershed. We’ve started with the infamous Kerby Mainline area; see our Clean Sweep page for more details and photos. More PATHs info can be found here.