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
From Sour to Sweet: The Cellular Alchemy of Our Mito Tea
Every cell in the body is like a tiny garden bed. Within its walls live small, ancient symbionts called mitochondria, descendants of once free microbes that learned to live within us. They are our breath, our fire, our living engines. Their task is simple and sacred: to turn oxygen and nutrients into energy, water, and life. When…
The Kidneys: Rivers Beneath the Surface
The kidneys are among the most misunderstood organs in the terrain of the body. Most people were taught they are simple filters, two bean shaped organs that strain waste from the blood and send it away. That explanation is technically correct, but it barely touches their depth. Your kidneys are biochemical alchemists, electrical regulators, mineral balancers, hormonal…
Coffee Flower Honey
Coffee blossoms are a brief candle of the coffee tree. They open after the first good rains, bright white, breathing out a perfume that sits somewhere between jasmine, citrus, and honeyed vanilla. Inside those petals are the same energetic signatures that move sap through the plant, guide bees to nectar, and set the berries. When you submerge…
Pomegranate, Who Knew!
As a child I never thought of the pomegranate tree as medicine. For me it was play. I would crush the red seeds and paint my lips and cheeks with their juice, pretending I had lipstick and blush. It was silly, but I remember how the color stained my skin and felt like magic. That color stayed…
Root of Fire, Root of Memory
Horseradish is one of those plants that carries memory in its roots at least it has for me. The ones growing here in my Ecuadorian gardens at home and the Project Site actually came from my old land in Canada. Fourteen years have passed since I left that soil, yet this root carries it within. When I…
The Living Intelligence of Vitamin C
Vitamin C is one of those nutrients that has been misunderstood in the modern world. Most people think of it as ascorbic acid or citric acid, but those are only the shell of something much more complex. They are the empty frame of a living compound that nature designed as a complete system. Yes, they can act…
Our Essential Oils
There is something deeply moving about working with plants in their most concentrated form. To distill their essence into a small bottle is like capturing the soul of the garden. Each drop carries not just aroma but the story of the soil, the care of the hands that tended the plants, and the strength of the plant’s…
Soothing Lip Balms
There is a simple pleasure in creating with my hands. Working with the beeswax, the herbs I have grown, and the oils I press or infuse brings me a kind of peace that only nature offers. I grow these plants, I tend them, and then I carry them into the kitchen to become medicine. The process is…
Banana’s Flower Boldness
I never imagined that I would one day use banana flowers as medicine. But, here in Ecuador, they hang in the garden, bold and purple, their petals opening one by one to reveal tiny hands of bananas inside. They looked more like ornaments than remedies, too grand to be anything other than part of the banana’s show…
Turmeric Absorption
We have all heard of taking turmeric (curcumin) with black pepper (piperine) to enhance the bioavailability and absorption of curcumin. Piperine, the bioactive compound found in black pepper, has been shown to significantly increase the absorption of curcumin by inhibiting metabolic enzymes that break it down and increasing intestinal permeability. Curcumin is a highly effective anti-inflammatory agent…
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
