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
Becoming Living Ground Part Two
There is a quiet movement happening now. You might have felt it too. It is a movement to withdraw, silently. Something deep inside you knows that much of what plays out around us….online, in politics, in families, in culture. It does not feel right. The noise has grown too loud. The stories too shallow. The arguments too…
A Pilgrimage Rooted in Soil
Pilgrimage usually brings to mind sacred paths across continents, places where saints left traces of miracles behind them. My pilgrimage has stayed closer to the ground. It has taken place in the living experiment of the Project site, a journey fueled by a clear vision and an unclear route. I have always known why this land calls…
Bougainvillea: Thorny Climber, Healing Medicine
Bougainvillea grows where it pleases. It climbs, weaves, and stretches upward toward the sun, wrapping itself around trees, fences, and walls in search of light. Its branches are lined with thorns that protect and anchor it, yet from this fierce defense bursts a brilliance of color that softens the landscape. It is a plant of contrast, showing…
Weekends at Living Ground
At our Gratitude Café, we are bringing life back to the table, from the soil to the plate. Each week we prepare something special from our gardens and kitchens. Some weekends it will be a full celebration meal like roast beef or turkey, and other weekends we will feature hearty favorites such as chili con carne, braised…
Pomegrante Skin – Parasite Protection
The pomegranate’s outer skin is a universe of medicine that most people throw away. Most people who know me know that when I began to study the soil, my whole way of seeing health changed. Once I understood how the soil food web functions, I saw how every part of life depends on microbial cooperation. The soil…
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…
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
