Prairie Oaks Institute

06/29/2024

Last weekend was a wonderful gift to the story of Prairie Oaks. Kim Devine Johnson now has a beautiful bench dedicated on the property in her honor. As the butterflies soar, so too may Monarch Joint Venture fly to new heights!

05/20/2024

If you’ve ever been to Prairie Oaks Institute, you have been touched by Kim Devine-Johnson.

She grew up at the farm.

She co-created Prairie Oaks Institute (POI) giving her family farm away for the sake of the common good.

She served on the board for the entirety of Prairie Oaks Institute’s existence.

She helped to entrust Prairie Oaks to the capable hands of Monarch Joint Venture going forward, giving the final blessing at POI’s last meeting.

She was the leader, caretaker, heart and soul of Prairie Oaks. As her family shares, we are broken as we share the news of her unexpected death.

Words below from her husband, and co-founder, Chris Johnson.

“First, the impossible, wrenching fact: my beloved wife and life-partner, and our children Amos Johnson, Mara Johnson, and Josiah Devine Johnson's beloved mom Kimberly Kay Devine-Johnson, 61, passed away suddenly on May 2, 2024, from complications that arose after routine surgery to repair a broken arm sustained in a fall.

It hurts beyond words.

Even more true is that her lifetime of deep care for others was grounded in the questions and reassurance of faith, her passionate commitments to justice and service on behalf of a better world, and her bottomless and expansive love, especially for her family.

And some basics: Kim was born November 3, 1962 in LeSueur, Minnesota, to mother Marilyn Mae (Schmidt) Devine and father Roger Lee Devine, and grew up on her family’s farm near Belle Plaine. She treasured her life there, loved the land and its creatures, and was active in church, 4H, music, speech, and many other aspects of small-town living that helped to shape the engaged and engaging person she was.

Kim received a B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, in 1985. She and I met in an epic water fight during our first year as students at Gustavus; ours was a classic, enduring love story. She earned a B.S. from the University of Minnesota in 1986. Her long career as a physical therapist included work in hospitals and clinics in the various cities where she and I and our family lived over the years, including Baltimore, Maryland; Cedar Rapids and Storm Lake, Iowa; St. Peter and Mankato, Minnesota. Since 2019 she was a pediatric physical therapist at Children’s Minnesota (Minneapolis).

Kim was deeply committed to her patients and their families, a tremendous colleague and inspirational mentor, and a tireless champion for justice, truth, and goodness. Her farm roots and care for the earth led her in 2002 to co-found Prairie Oaks Institute, a nonprofit educational retreat center on the farm in Belle Plaine, which she worked tirelessly to steward across the years until in spring of 2024 it transitioned to become the global headquarters of The Monarch Joint Venture.

Words fail, of course. But more about Kim the person: She loved reading (especially with her book group of many years), plants and living things, travel, music, and the arts, and meaningful conversations with others about their lives and about things that matter. She loved to laugh. She always had your back. Kim felt everything deeply. She cared, she loved, she gave with extraordinary heart. She was a prolific letter-writer and spectacular listener; both were among the many ways that she sustained wondrous friendships across many chapters of her life. She radiated grace, consistently saw people for who they truly are and could become, and brought out the best in others. Kim was a vibrant, funny, smart, fierce, kind, compassionate “force of nature” – an ultimately indescribable human being.

Kim is preceded in death by her parents and is survived by sister Tammy Devine (Mike Carlson) and niece Gwen and nephew Caleb; her husband of 37 years Christopher Johnson; and our children Amos (Theresa Warren) of Ames, Iowa; Mara and Josiah, both of Tacoma, Washington.

A service in celebration of Kim’s life will be Sunday, June 2, 2024, at 5:00 p.m., with visitation beginning at 4:00, at Edina Community Lutheran Church, 4113 W 54th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55424. The service will be live-streamed at eclc.org/sunday-live-stream. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are welcome in Kim’s honor to establish and care for a pollinator garden at the Prairie Oaks Institute farm campus of Monarch Joint Venture.

We miss you, Kimberly. We're endlessly grateful for the Gift and Blessing you've been in our lives and in the world. We love you, we love you, we love you....”

03/05/2024

May the sacred story of this land continue to teach and serve into this exciting next chapter! Blessings to the wonderful organization of Monarch Joint Venture!

03/01/2024

A SEASON OF CHANGE

(An Announcement from the Board of Directors)

We’re blessed here in Minnesota with the gifts and rigors of all four seasons (this past “non-winter” notwithstanding!). The inexorable cycle of the seasons brings a kaleidoscope of beauty and a reminder of the resilience and ingenuity of life. Seeds that are scattered in the fall lie dormant under the snow and ice until the sun and warm breezes of spring stir green shoots of possibility to emerge. The seasons also remind us of the inevitability and necessity of change. Change can be a lot of things – it can be hard, sought after, resisted; it can be terrifying and exhilarating. Change is often experienced as loss, to be grieved; it can also be celebrated as marking the emergence of something new and wondrous.

And as everything turns, a season of change has come again to Prairie Oaks Institute (POI). Beginning in the late 1990’s the Schmidt-Devine family began to re-envision their century-old family farm for a new era. They founded Prairie Oaks as an educational nonprofit organization and donated the 20-acre homestead for the main campus. POI honored their legacy by preserving a distinctive natural habitat and providing a place for learning and reflection. Across the years, POI hosted a wide range of retreats for organizations and individuals, educational workshops, and community gatherings around its threefold emphasis on retreat and renewal, education and leadership development for the common good, and environmental care and climate justice.

Now, the vision that began to take shape in 1999 around the kitchen table at Harvest House and thrived for 25 years as Prairie Oaks Institute has run its course. On February 17, 2024, the POI board voted to dissolve as an organization – AND to gift its 20-acre campus and buildings to the Monarch Joint Venture, to serve as the global headquarters for its crucial work on behalf of the common good.

In many deeply real and important ways, it’s more a matter of “evolve” than “dissolve” – perhaps a bit like what happens in the turn of the seasons or when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. There’s a stage in that transformation where what has been the caterpillar dissolves into what’s called (get this!) “imaginal cells,” from which is formed the butterfly. It seems fitting to say that for 25 years, POI has been a caterpillar, and now it’s dissolved/evolved into what needs to come next. Together, over the past several months, POI and the MJV have been helping each other to imagine a way forward that honors the Schmidt-Devine family’s original vision and generosity and builds on POI’s work across the years. Those of us currently on the POI board of directors have the utmost confidence in the leadership of the Monarch Joint Venture as the next stewards of this land and its inherent values and mission.

Deep and profound thanks go to all of POI’s supporters, board members, volunteers, caretakers, neighbors, program providers, and guests for 25 years of care, hard work, generosity, and encouragement of POI’s vision to be a catalyst of rejuvenation for people and the planet.

The Monarch Joint Venture envisions this space as an embodiment of their mission to conserve monarchs and other pollinators. While honoring the legacy of former stewards of the land at the Prairie Oaks campus, the MJV will transform and utilize the campus for conservation, education, science, collaboration, and community engagement.

To mark this momentous transition, this wondrous transformation from what’s-been to what-needs-to-be-next, you are warmly invited to a public open-house celebration at the Monarch Joint Venture Prairie Oaks campus on Saturday, June 22, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM.

If you are interested in following the Monarch Joint Venture’s journey and growth at the Prairie Oaks campus, we invite you to sign up for their newsletter and consider a donation to their dedicated Prairie Oaks fund.

https://monarchjointventure.org/get-involved/mjv-newsletter-sign-up
https://monarchjointventure-bloom.kindful.com/?campaign=1291018

09/11/2023

At the turn of the seasons -- and in this time of great transition -- please join us for this life-giving retreat. Registration closes SOON (Sept 30), so visit
milkweedgroup.regfox.com/thresholds2023
OR
couragerenewal.org
for more info (including "choose your own" pricing") and to register.

05/03/2023

If you need some native plants this spring, check out the SWCD spring sale!

Our annual spring plant and seed sale is LIVE! Place your orders of Minnesota native plants and seeds and other supplies today at https://www.scottswcdtrees.com/native-prairie

Pre-set kits of 36 native perennial plants are just $65! Native wildflower seed starts at $60 for 1,000 square feet of coverage.

Rain barrels and compost bins are available for the FIRST TIME at our spring sale.

Order ahead and pickup your kits at the Scott County Fairgrounds on Friday, June 2 from 8:00am - 6:00pm. Pickup is for preorders ONLY! No kits will be available for purchase on the day of pickup.