Leisha Sometimes I stop and honestly ask myself what I am doing. Not in a dramatic way. Just a real, quiet question that comes up when I look at the land, the work, the responsibility of it all. There are moments I wonder how I got here and why this is the path I am on.
And the only thing that ever feels true is that this is not one idea or one decision. It is the accumulation of a whole life. Things I got wrong. Things I learned late. Things I tried and failed at. Moments where I wanted to do better, live differently, be more helpful, more life giving, even when I did not fully know how.
Why God would choose me for this, I honestly do not know. I do not feel special or particularly qualified although I have wore many hats in my life. I sorta feel shaped. I feel worn in and sometimes worn out. I feel like I kept showing up, even when I was unsure, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it would have been easier to walk away. You see, I am in a position where I could live a very easy life, simple, quiet, and slow…and something in my keeps me choosing the Project.
Last year, we came out as a Proejct. What had been in creation mode for a couple of years an behind the scenes was finally visible. Not polished. Not complete. Just real and standing in front of us and shared.
At Living Ground, we are not trying to change the world. We are changing our little world. I have a deep appreciation for the challenges we have met head on and for the personal challenges that have tugged at my heart, my soul, and my relationship with the land itself. Pressure has a way of forcing things into form. I have learned that by living it. I own that.
For those who believe there is an endpoint to getting life right, let me gently burst that bubble. We do not arrive there. We never quite do. And when someone claims they have, or presents themselves as having reached it, what I usually see is stagnation disguised as certainty.
One of the great deceptions of our time is how easily we have spiritualized our wounds. Social media has made it possible to perform healing without actually living it. We speak the language of wholeness while bypassing the work of embodiment. We convince ourselves first, then others, and too often there is profit involved in the illusion. To actually do the work is not for the romancers and know it alls. It is humbling and it means you can show the results with honesty.
Living Ground is not an idea or a brand. It is a physical creation built on sweat, repetition, failure, and effort. Rough hands. Tired bodies. Long days. It exists because we have proven, through doing, that another way of living is possible. Not perfect. Not finished. But real.
I do not feel like 2026 is about starting something new. It feels more like inhabiting what we have already been building, quietly, behind the scenes. Sometimes with strain and failure. Sometimes with fierce commitment, even when it would have been easier to stop. I often questioned that myself. 2025 was a lot of hard work.
In 2026, I intend to finish the hostel and dormitory rooms at Living Ground. We already have one room completed.
I intend these spaces to be more than buildings. I intend them to hold experience. Places where guests return to their own lives carrying skills, awareness, and tools to bloom where they are planted.
n 2026, we are also setting some very clear intentions around how we share what we grow. We want to bring back the u-pick baskets. Not as an event, but as a normal part of how people interact with the land here. Walking the gardens, harvesting what is ready, choosing what feels right in that moment, and learning by doing.
I also want people to be able to walk our gardens the way you would walk a garden center, but without everything being in pots. I want people to see the plant growing where it actually thrives, in relationship with soil, sun, water, and other plants. Then they can take that same plant home and start, or deepen, their own garden with real context. This is our gardens becoming seeds for other gardens.
I see us opening up a regular Saturday or Sunday market day. Something shared on a grander scale, not just ours. A place where other local growers we already work with, people who have incredible gardens and real abundance, to share what they grow. This feels important to me. There are so many good growers around us, and they deserve a place where their work is seen and supported. Living Ground can become a funnel for this. Just helping move good things from the land to the people who need them.
Living Ground, I hope, has stepped into a new level of operation where people arrive not as consumers, but as participants. Guests become learners. Learners become hands in the soil, in the kitchen, and in the systems of daily life. Self reliance is no longer an idea I talk about. It is something people live while they are here.
I intend to continue offering creative, nourishing, genuinely delicious food and products rooted in preservation and sustainable harvesting. This is not about trends or novelty. It is about remembering how humans have always fed themselves well by working with time, microbes, seasons, and patience. Food that carries life because it comes from living systems.
Living Ground will offer medicine through food, as it should be.
Personally, I intend to step back into the gardens and soil work with a deeper level of listening. Over the past couple of years, other building blocks have demanded much of my time. While I have kept an eye and focus on the gardens, it has not been at the depth I desire. I want intimacy with the land. To know what to move, what to encourage, what needs attention, what is flourishing, what is ready, what is available.
This year I see more workshops and retreats being offered..where we finally step into our original intention.
This year I see less forcing and less correcting. I feel a shift toward deeper understanding of how nature wants to move, recover, regenerate, and express beauty.
I want the land to stop people in their tracks. I want them to feel her, not just look at her. I want the soil to teach through presence rather than explanation. I want others to see the team as a macro manifestation that mirrors how microscopic life works its quiet magic in the soil.
I intend to return to my love of statue work and sculpture. That part of me has been quiet for a few years. It has not gone. It has simply been waiting for space and time, for me to get lost in creative flow again. In 2026, I allow art back in without pressure or justification. I let my hands remember what they know and love to do.
I desire to continue even when it is hard. Even when it would be reasonable to stop. I choose to keep offering opportunity to those who might not otherwise receive it. To support people who try, who show up with sincerity, who give their all, even while they are still learning how to carry it.
I intend to keep finding new ways of being and operating that are inclusive, open, and loving, while also grounded and sustainable. Small projects and small teams can succeed. I am learning how to build systems that do not require self sacrifice to function. This feels important. Necessary.
I will finish another book this year, one that shares my lived learning with semi tropical plants and trees. What the land has taught me by allowing me to work with her long enough to listen. What I am discovering daily and finding myself in awe of. I feel called to share this.
I see my tribe growing into a more solid team, one that is enough to keep this project stable and alive into the future. I see people stepping forward, taking responsibility, making a difference, and being rewarded in ways that go beyond money. I see the selfish learning how to be unselfish. I see shared pride, shared care, shared vision.
There is also a quieter layer I carry forward into 2026. One that does not announce itself, yet informs how I build, how I tend, and how I love. There are places in my heart that ache, not because I have failed to care, but because caring does not always result in closeness. I have learned that some bonds must be held without touch, without dialogue, without resolution.
I no longer try to force understanding where it is not yet possible. I see beyond pain, even when pain cannot yet see beyond itself. I trust that life has its own curriculum, and that growth comes through lived experience, not persuasion. Awareness arrives when it is ready. Love, when it is real, does not expire simply because it is not presently received.
This kind of distance is more common than we like to admit. It exists quietly in many families, often hidden behind competence, strength, or silence. It is tender. It is painful. And it is part of the human condition in this time. I carry grief, yes, but I also carry acceptance. Not resignation. Acceptance. The kind that allows life to keep moving without hardening the heart.
This, too, belongs in what I am building. Living Ground is not a place of performance or perfection. It is a place where things are allowed to take the time they take. Where healing is not demanded, only supported. Where growth is trusted, even when it cannot be seen yet.
I move into 2026 rooted, open, and willing to love without guarantees. The same way I work with the land. The same way I trust living systems. Patient. Present. And still believing in what can become.
And I see more ease.
More fun.
More peace.
More patience.
More awareness.
Not because life gets easier, but because I am more rooted in how I meet it and how I do it.
2026 feels like a year where the systems I have been building begin to hold me in return. Like good soil. Like a mature ecosystem. Like a place that nourishes what enters it, including me.
