Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
This November, from November 8–13, 2026, I will be teaching a new six-day workshop here at Living Ground Project in southern Ecuador called Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes. It brings together many of the threads that have been part of my work for years: soil, compost, plants, …
I am deep into writing a new book, Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, and it is will become the foundation for the student manual and teaching material for our upcoming Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop at Living Ground. The next workshop will be held November 7–13, 2026, here in southern Ecuador, …
Living Ground has already been sprouting alfalfa, mung bean and sunflower at the café, and we have also been freeze-drying the sprouts into these ridiculously good little crunchy packets of nutrition. Now we are ready to expand and we are in investigative and research mode. We are testing broccoli, carrot, …
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 …
After months of thinking, planning, tasting, cooking, and more than a little rearranging, we are excited to finally share our new Living Ground menu. This isn’t simply a new list of meals. It is a completely different way to experience food at Living Ground. Instead of choosing from a list …
I often wonder where my fascination with gardens, herbs, and growing food really began. Looking back, I think it started in my mother’s rose garden. I didn’t realize it then, but perhaps that was also the beginning of learning about self-reliance. As a little girl in England, I decided I …
I just finished the participants final reports, detailing each person’s live blood journey from the week-long experience and personalizing their experience. My goal was to get to a point where I was no longer explaining and each person was witnessing and understanding. I gave this everything I had. I shared …
I am exhausted. The preparation over the last few weeks has been intense, brutal, satisfying, concerning, and fortifying. I feel confident. I know what I am doing, I know the material, and I know the purpose. But I also feel as though I have been doing the job of an …
I believe I am entering a newness. Preparing for this retreat has been opening doors I never expected. I literally started moving the microscopes into the workshop room and thought, “Why not make this my office?” Suddenly, a space I had been viewing one way revealed an entirely different possibility. …
A Love Letter to Place, Soil, and the Foods That Remember There are moments at the Living Ground Project when I bite into something from the garden and have to stop everything I am doing. Usually, it is a tomato. I stand there in the middle of the garden, juice …