Leisha Creating something like Living Ground Ecuador is not simply about having ideas. I have lots of ideas, probably far too many, but I can usually see the bigger picture very clearly.
I think that is one of my gifts. I can look at a piece of land, a café, a garden, a microscope, a workshop, a bottle of our electrolyte tonic and a group of people and see how all of those pieces could fit together into something much bigger. They are not separate things in my mind. I see how they connect.
The challenge is taking something that is so clear inside me and somehow bringing the people around me into that picture. I love the people I work with, and I also know that I think and connect things in ways that may not be obvious to someone standing in a different place. What I need to transfer into their minds might not make sense at this time.
That requires patience from me. I need to learn how to communicate what I see, explain why the small things matter and give people time to understand how their part fits into a much larger whole. Nobody else has been walking around inside my head watching Living Ground develop all these years.
At this point, a huge amount of my time is going into the things nobody really sees. Inventory, stock, labels, procedures, training, schedules, what was made, what was sold, what needs to be made again and why eleven bags of granola have suddenly appeared that the inventory system knows absolutely nothing about.
I would much rather be in the garden, looking through a microscope, making some statues, creating something in the apothecary or preparing a workshop. But Living Ground has reached a point where these foundations matter just as much as the things I love doing.
Something as simple as writing down that 4 salsas were made connects to inventory, costs, sales, labels, online orders and knowing when another batch needs to be made. To someone else it might look like a little number on a piece of paper. To me, that number is holding hands with ten other things.
I am having to take what has lived naturally in my own head and turn it into systems that other people can use. That is a completely different kind of work, and I am discovering that building a project is very different from building a project that can operate without you.
That has become one of my biggest goals.
I want Living Ground to function successfully without me needing to be present all the time. I want to be able to take a break, some personal rest time and know that the gardens are growing, the café is working, products are being made, guests are being cared for and the people here understand what needs to happen.
If everything falls apart because I am not here remembering every detail, then Living Ground is still only an extension of me. True success, to me, will be when something that began as a picture inside my own mind has become strong enough to live in the land, the systems and the hands of other people.
Living Ground needs to sustain itself financially. There are wages, gardens, buildings, equipment, animals, workshops, supplies and all the daily costs of keeping a place like this alive. Each week, I share the income, expenses and overall financial situation with the entire team because I want them to understand how the project is doing and how the work we all do connects to the bigger picture. My hope is that this gives everyone a clearer sense of what it really takes to keep Living Ground growing and moving forward.
Accumulating financial wealth has never been the reason for doing this. The wealth I am interested in is much broader.
There is wealth in soil becoming alive again and food growing from it. There is wealth in medicinal plants multiplying across the land, microbes doing their work beneath our feet and knowledge being learned, practiced and passed to somebody else. There is also enormous wealth in people. If the women working here develop new skills, become more confident, earn an income, discover things they are good at and begin taking responsibility for parts of Living Ground themselves, the project has created something that cannot really be measured on a balance sheet.
That kind of wealth spreads. It moves into families, into knowledge, into food, into gardens and into what another person may create later because of something they learned here.
I think that is part of why everything feels as though it is beginning to come together right now. I have finally put workshop dates on the calendar for the next two and a half years, and we will be teaching Live Blood Analysis, Dried Blood Analysis, the Soil Food Web and Plant & Kitchen Alchemy here at Living Ground.
These workshops make sense here because I want people to learn inside a project that is actually doing the work. If we are studying soil biology, we can walk outside, make compost, investigate roots and weeds and put samples under the microscope. If we are working with plants and food, we can harvest from the gardens, ferment, dehydrate, freeze-dry, prepare medicines and then sit down together and eat something that came from the land around us.
The blood, soil, plants, microbes and food are not separate subjects for me anymore. Working with the soil food web changed the way I understand the human microbiome because I began seeing similar relationships everywhere. Soil is not simply a collection of minerals, and the body is not simply a collection of organs. Life happens in communities, and those communities depend upon the terrain around them.
That thread runs through Living Ground. It connects the gardens, the food, the apothecary, the microscope work and the workshops in a way that makes complete sense to me, even if it has taken years for the physical pieces to catch up with the picture in my head.
Now another piece is taking shape. We are building a small spa area with a sauna, a place for herbal wraps and natural therapies, and a yoga room. I can imagine people learning during the day, eating at the Gratitude Café, working with plants and microscopes, enjoying the spa and then waking up here in the mountains the next morning.
As the workshops grow, they will bring more people through the café, more guests staying here and more opportunities for the men and women who are already part of Living Ground. Some may become involved with the spa, workshops, guest rooms, gardens, food preparation or other parts of the project that suit them.
This is the accumulation I am feeling now. Gardens that were planted years ago, plants that have multiplied, knowledge gathered over decades, the café, apothecary, guest rooms, workshops, microscopes, spa and the people working here are beginning to meet each other.
I see it in the plants. My Black Elephant Ear began with one $10 plant I found years ago in a nursery in the cloud forest while driving home from the coast. I brought it home, planted it beside the waterways where it had moisture and shade, and today I probably have hundreds of this beautiful plant.
I love that story because I did not need to manufacture hundreds of this plant. I found the right place for one plant, gave it good conditions and allowed it to do what living things naturally do when they are supported.
Perhaps that is part of what I am learning about Living Ground too.
For years I have been creating, planting, experimenting and adding pieces. Now the work is becoming more about creating the conditions that allow everything, including the people, to function together without me having to personally hold every thread.
That is not always the exciting part. Give me plants, herbs, oils, jars and a microscope and I can happily disappear for hours. Give me an inventory sheet that needs to be entered, reconciled and uploaded and reality returns rather quickly. Still, I understand the purpose of it now.
When we look at a healthy garden, we see the plants, flowers and fruit. We do not see most of what is making that growth possible because much of the real work is happening below the surface, among roots, microbes, fungi, minerals, water and organic matter. Living Ground feels a lot like that at the moment. Much of my work is happening underneath the visible growth, building systems, sharing knowledge, strengthening the team and preparing the project for what is coming next.
Someone walking through the gate may never know how much work sits underneath their lunch at the Gratitude Café, the elixir they buy, the workshop they attend or the room they stay in. I actually hope they don’t. I hope they simply experience a place that feels alive and works well.
Then I stop occasionally and look around. The gardens are full, the café is operating, products are being made, the women are learning, workshop dates are on the calendar, the spa is taking shape and the land is very much alive.
I can still see the bigger picture, but my understanding of my place within it is changing. My job is not to hold every piece forever. My job is to help create something strong enough that many people can understand it, contribute to it and carry it forward.
For me, that would be success. Living Ground would sustain itself financially, but its real wealth would be in the soil, food, plants, microbes, knowledge, skills, opportunities and people that have accumulated around it.
There is a lot happening behind the scenes right now, and much of it is not particularly glamorous. But I have a feeling that many years of work are finally beginning to meet underground, and I am very curious to see what grows from those roots.
