Leisha My patio outdoor office and the Project Site is currently a landscape of preparation, drying herbs, working the gardens, jars in their early stages, and piles of herbs and foods (as medicine) being sorted. We are deep in preparation for the Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop, November 8–14, and I am getting so excited as the pieces of this week fall into place.
This workshop has been growing in my mind for a long, long time because it brings together so much of what I love to teach. To me, soil, microbes, plants, fermentation, food and the human microbiome are not separate subjects. They are threads of the same cloth, part of one living system, and that is really what this week is about.
The Story Begins in the Soil
We start this workshop where everything begins: the soil, earth and the gardens. We will look at the soil food web and explore the microbial communities surrounding plant roots. These relationships are part of how plants access minerals, build resilience and become biologically rich. It is foundational for all alchemy that the soil is understood as Nature creates.
With the help of microscopes, we will look directly into that invisible world. Seeing microbes moving, feeding and interacting changes the way you understand soil. The word “microbiome” stops being an abstract concept and becomes something alive in front of you. And from there, the relationship with our own bodies becomes much easier to see. The soil food web supports the plant, the plant becomes food, and that food enters another microbial ecosystem inside us. The environments are different, but the principle of community, nourishment and relationship continues.
The Ecology of the Kitchen
From the garden, we move into the kitchen, where another kind of ecology begins. We will explore sprouting, fermentation, broths, vinegars, honey preparations, herbs, making medicine and cultured foods. We are also going to dive into the art of making medicinal chocolate, bringing cacao together with some of the plants and preparations we are studying.
One of the central ideas of this workshop is the importance of conditions. Water, salt, microbes, acidity, heat, fat and time all change what happens. This is true in a compost pile, in a fermenting jar, in the soil surrounding a plant root and inside the human body. Once you begin to understand conditions, cooking changes. You are no longer simply following a recipe. You begin to understand why something ferments, why a seed sprouts, why one preparation extracts something different from a plant than another, and how small changes can completely alter the outcome.
A Personal Journey: Your Eight
This workshop will be personal as well as practical. We will work with the six tastes, bitter, astringent, sour, pungent, salty and sweet, and explore what taste can tell us about foods and herbs. Each participant will also create Your Eight: one seed to sprout, one ferment to begin, three herbs and three foods to focus on through the week and alchemize.
The idea is to begin noticing what suits your body, what you are drawn to, what may be missing, and where you may want to bring more nourishment, diversity and microbial richness into your daily food.
This is very much a hands-on week. We will sprout seeds, begin ferments, make fire cider, prepare medicinal broths and chocolates, work with herbs, make cultured foods and observe how they change over several days. We will taste, smell, compare, experiment and use microscopes to see some of the relationships that are normally invisible to us. There will be plenty of teaching, but there will also be plenty of doing, because I want everyone to leave with things they can actually continue at home.
A healthy garden is not created by feeding a single plant. It is created by supporting the entire food web beneath and around it. I see the human body in much the same way. We are also ecosystems, shaped by food, microbes, minerals, plants, environment and the countless relationships happening inside us all the time. That connection between soil, food and body is really the heart of this workshop.
Two Spaces Left
We currently have two spaces left for November 8–14, with both onsite and offsite options available. You can stay here at Living Ground and be immersed in the gardens and daily life of the project, or stay nearby and join us each day.
I’ve included two short videos below. One is specifically about Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, and the other gives you a wider feeling for the different kinds of learning that happen here at Living Ground and our other workshops.
There is a lot of preparation and I am very excited. If you have any questions, I am most happy to answer. If you would like to ask me questions about the workshop, onsite accommodation, or the offsite option, you can message me directly on WhatsApp:
