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
Inflammation Is Not a Discovery
Hey, I am not a scientist, but I do carry a kind of lived understanding that comes from watching the body closely over time. So when I read that inflammation is now being brought forward as a possible cause of heart disease, presented almost like a new discovery, I pause. According to Scientific American, research is now…
Live Blood Workshop Interview
https://livingground.art/live-blood-analysis-retreat/
Self Reliance, or Something Like It
When I was around thirty, living in Canada, I felt something I couldn’t really explain. It wasn’t loud or dramatic; it was just a quiet pull that kept returning. I felt a steady urge to get out and get closer to something real. At that time, I had no skills. My family had just sold everything, including…
What Remains When Everything Shifts
This is a follow up on my recent sharing Living Ground Shift and Change of View. Paradigm Shift. These sharings are my daily muses, the questions, the actions, the musings on what the f**k am I doing. My intention is to tell a story of the process of Living Ground from a human, flawed, fragile perspective. It…
Protected: I Was a Mom Who… Tried
Living Ground Shift
Things are shifting a little here at Living Ground. Those who are following or aware of our situation, we are being forced to reinvent and get creative. So, changes…but not in what we make, and not in what we believe in, but in how things are shared. Many of our “home-made” products will continue to be presented…
The Live Blood Workshop: How This Was Always the Destination
We are excited to announce we are opening a small group Live Blood Analysis immersion workshop here at Living Ground in southern Ecuador. This is an experience where people come to learn how to observe their own blood in real time, understand what they are seeing, and begin to make informed decisions for themselves from that place…
Learning to Weed With the Garden, Not Against It
One of the most common misunderstandings in gardening is that weeding simply means removing unwanted plants. When people hear the word weeding, they often imagine clearing everything away until the soil looks clean and bare. At first this can feel very satisfying. The bed looks tidy, the rows look perfect, and the garden appears under control. But…
The Plants That Travel With Us,
There is a plant I was recently introduced too, Laritaco. In botanical language it is known as Vernonanthura patens. It is a shrub with narrow leaves and clusters of soft purple flowers, often growing along roadsides, abandoned fields, and the edges of regenerating forest. When I first heard about Laritaco, my curiosity was not just about the…
Protected: Life Written in This Land
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
