The Cold Moon Tour : It's Not Just A Phase

Rikki Longino is organizing this fundraiser.

We are The Mobile Moon Co-op, six femme and queer herbalists and artists who work together to aid communities and ecosystems through education, empowerment, and botanical stewardship. We hope to take our cooperative on tour, offering radical land-based trainings, art workshops, tea parties, and handmade botanical products and cross-pollinating with our networks throughout the Southwest. But we need help!

Our ½ acre urban farm is located in the Wasatch Valley (Salt Lake City, UT) and we steward an ecosystem of food and medicine plants as part of a long-game agroecological project to restore the soil, increase biodiversity, and feed and nourish our people. We make hand-crafted products (teas, tinctures, salves, preserves, seeds and arts) whose value expresses the love of this land and our love for the community.

On the daily, our communities face barriers to healthcare, education, housing, meaningful work and connection to nature. With each seed that we plant, each event that we host, and each product that we make, we strive to implement a framework of intersectionality and reciprocity with the needs of our community and environment. As droughts and industrial agriculture drain our Great Salt Lake, we protest and save seeds from water-wise perennial plants. As gentrification drives individuals out of their homes, we host fundraisers with nourishing community meals to keep them in place. As healthcare becomes prohibitively expensive for our friends and family, we share what we know of healing plants that soothe and tone the body’s natural defenses. 30% of our member-based income goes directly into a mutual aid fund for community members in need of support.

The Mobile Moon Co-op has been operating for 6 years as of Spring 2023. This year we decided that the “Mobile” part of our title came from the original vision of the organization, which was to travel as a way to expand our network and cross-pollinate. For years, we have been preparing- first with a 1980 school bus (currently parked for good after a few years of burping diesel around the Salt Lake Valley). Now with a Toyota Tacoma and a vintage trailer converted into a mini apothecary and artspace.

It takes a huge amount of time and money to build out a trailer, make and package quality products from our farm, and coordinate and plan community events in other parts of the country, not to mention travel expenses. Your support ensures that we can get all the materials we need and compensate our hardworking team for the efforts that they put in. One of our founding members, Charlotte, has been working remotely from Chile and we want to include her on our tour. Traveling out-of-state will require gas money, lodging, and ensuring that we are not a burden on our hosts. This campaign ensures that we can tread lightly and act in reciprocity on our journey.

We will be traveling through Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and the Bay Area. Some of our hosts will include: Resiliency Hub Moab, University of New Mexico Seed Resiliency Exhibit, Spirit Farm- Diné-led Indigenous soil-builders, POC Fungi Community in San Diego, and more! If you have a network of folks in these areas who align with our mission, feel free to reach out and make connections!