Living Earth Center| Sustainability| Education| Community

Featured Programs and Interests

Through our Community Food Connection Program, LEC directly connects people to the land and to healthy, organic produce. We are able to confront the issues of food insecurity and sovereignty in our community collaboratively through a multi-faceted approach. From youth educational programming to navigating ways for emerging growers to enter the local food economy, LEC works with our Community Partners to create pathways to food and land access and agency over food choices.

Community Garden

Located on the former farm site of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the Living Earth Gardens provide a beautiful organic space where neighbors and family can gather, grow food, and nurture a self-sufficient empowered community.
Individual gardeners, as well as community partners (MY Place, MRCI, and MNSU College of Allied Health and Nursing's Eng-AGE-ment Garden) tend their plots together. Our garden is as diverse as Mankato itself – including everyone from native Minnesotans to new immigrants. Ten different languages are spoken by the 120+ gardeners.
Community Farm

Since 2021, LEC has worked in partnership with Blue Earth County to manage the Blue Earth County Community Farm. The Farm is home to our Food Donation Program. All food grown through this program is donated back to into the community. Under the guidance of our Farm Manager, both individuals and groups volunteer their time to tend to these plots.

Since 2022, the Farm has also been home to our Emerging Growers Program, which addresses food sovereignty in the Mankato area by partnering with community members who have expressed concern that they are unable to access culturally significant foods and/or want to grow larger amounts of produce but do not have access to land.
Events, Workshops and Programs

Living Earth Center provides opportunities where minds can be opened, ideas can be shared, and growth can take place through workshops, events, and conferences offered throughout the year. Honoring all spiritual traditions and paths, Living Earth Center also holds gatherings to honor seasonal transitions with ritual and reflection. Find out more by clicking here.
Get Involved

Living Earth Center believes that each person makes a valuable contribution to the world and systemic change can be traced all the way down to the individual level. Whether you are interested in donating, volunteering, gardening, learning or making a meaningful shift, you are helping to create a ripple effect within the local and greater Earth community.
Read more about how to get involved by clicking here.

Sharing Common Ground

Like a healthy ecosystem, we believe that everyone has something important and valuable to offer to our local and greater Earth community. We believe in bringing people with different backgrounds and strengths together to share common ground over food, learning and storytelling. We invite you to join us in celebrating nature's abundance and honoring our shared resilience and responsibility in the interconnection of everything.

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Historic Big Red Barn

News and Updates

September 19, 2024

Tis the Season for Apple Butter

byLiving Earth Center

Fall is officially apple season, and I am lucky enough to have generous friends with an apple tree in their backyard. They invited my youngest and I over to pick any apples we wanted, and we came home with a full bag of apples just perfect for making apple butter.

I absolutely love apple butter on toast or english muffins. Its sweet cinnamon goodness is the perfect taste of fall. The recipe mentions storing the apple butter by freezing. I have always canned mine (using the hot water bath method for 10 minutes with a 1/4" of headspace). It will produce around 3 pints of apple butter, so you will have more than enough to eat some right away, share some, and store some for later!

I found the recipe I used on the internet, and I chose it because it had the phrase "no peeling!" right in the title...

August 14, 2024

Seed to Sauce Program Reaching Across Generations

byLiving Earth Center

Once a month from May through September, LEC Program Manager Cora Uyigue has been visiting Generations Child and Memory Care to bring our Seed to Sauce Programming to their one-of-a-kind child care and memory care facility. "Working with Generations is unique because I get to work with preschoolers and patients in their memory care, making it a beautiful cross-generational experience that the kids and elders get to share together," Uyigue said.

Projects have ranged from planting seed and seedlings and tending to their on site garden, to making scavenger hunt nature bracelets (pictured in photo). According to Uyigue, working with the group from Generations has been a unique and rewarding experience. " I love watching the different ways each participant engages with the activities...