Field Notes from my journey creating Living Ground, Ecuador.
“If I want people to care about the Earth itself, about the land and soil that feed us, about the way our food, medical, political, and religious systems are shaping us, and about how divided and dysfunctional we have become, then I need to plant those concerns inside stories that are wide enough and deeply connective enough that others can recognize themselves within them.” Leisha of the Living Ground Project.
Living Ground Recent Posts
Dock: The Root That Finds the Forgotten
I would look for her when nettle stung. That’s how it started. My childhood knees would brush too close to a nettle patch, leaving a red, tingling fire that made me whimper. Someone would say, “Find the Dock.” And I would. Not because I understood anything about mucilage or tannins or how plants soothe each other, but…
Symbiosis
Let’s get something clear. Symbiosis isn’t a fairy tale. It’s not a sweet song of unity and harmony. It’s a gritty, often uncomfortable dance of survival. Push and pull, give and take, competition woven into cooperation. That’s the real rhythm of nature. When you zoom into the microscopic world, things get a lot messier than our polished…
The Power Beneath Our Feet: Why Real Leadership Grows from the Soil
We are living in a time of disorientation. Many are searching for meaning, for answers, for someone to speak truth in a world that feels increasingly synthetic and detached. We’re told to look to the experts, the institutions, the leaders in suits and robes, the ones who speak from marble podiums and digital screens. But what if…
Lemon Balm: The Garden’s Gentle Emissary of Joy
There is a presence in the garden that does not announce itself loudly. She does not climb or sprawl with wild ambition. She doesn’t need to. Lemon Balm, Melissa officinalis, grows with quiet purpose, humming with a bright lemony scent that drifts across the garden like laughter on a breeze. You might miss her at first, tucked…
Biodiversity, Details, and the Weaving of a Living Future
At the Living Ground Project, we are growing far more than gardens. We are cultivating a living system one that begins deep in the soil and extends upward through plants, people, ideas, and the shared heartbeat of community. What I believed I was building in the beginning has transformed. It’s become something more honest and alive, shaped…
Just Breathe: Living Through It
For anyone who has ever wondered how we keep going when the ground underneath us shifts….. Living Ground isn’t a perfect system. It isn’t polished. It isn’t always smooth. It is shaped by real lives, by people learning as they go, and by the land itself. Some days it feels like we’re building something strong. Other days…
Living Landscapes, Living Futures
In this article, I explore the intricate relationships between the soil microbiome, plants, and human health. Through recent discoveries and personal experience, I share how restoring healthy soil is about more than adding microbes, it is about rebuilding the living terrain itself. Together we are learning that the health of plants, soil, and people depends on fostering…
Living Ground Mission Update
I can feel it … the pulse of something long planted, now pushing its way to the surface. The Living Ground Store and Café is almost ready to open. And standing here, on this edge between what has been vision and what is becoming reality, I’m carrying a thousand stories some light, some heavy, all alive. This…
The Surprising Superpowers of Nettle
In my 30s, roaming Canada’s wild corners, I felt stuck, like life had dulled my edges. Nettles were just childhood foes then, stinging my shins during backyard adventures. But one quiet day, I brewed a nettle seed tea, curious about its emerald-green glow. That nutty, vibrant sip woke me up, not just my body but something deeper….
Blood, Nanobots, and the Terrain
Since the pandemic era swept through the world, I’ve been receiving an increasing number of messages with links, images, and shaky videos showing blood samples, most accompanied by ominous claims about nanotechnology infiltrating our biology. Some of these claims come from online influencers, Substack writers, or self-declared researchers. And each time I open one of these messages,…
What is Living Ground
,The Living Ground Project is a living classroom in southern Ecuador, built from soil, food, plants, microbes, and community.
Here, we grow much of what we serve and teach. The gardens feed the café, the apothecary, the workshops, the books, and the people who come here to learn a different way of living. Everything begins with the soil, because healthy soil grows stronger plants, stronger food, and stronger people.
Living Ground is a place for practical self-reliance. We teach gardening, soil regeneration, fermentation, herbal medicine, food preservation, natural health, and the connection between the human microbiome and the soil food web. Our work is not theory. It is lived every day through the gardens, the kitchen, the store, the café, the animals, the workshops, and the land itself.
The vision is simple. Restore the soil, grow real food, preserve knowledge, create local work, and help people remember that health does not begin in a bottle. It begins in relationship with the land, the microbes, the plants, the food, and each other.
Living Ground’s Online Courses in Self Reliance
