A Residential Land & Community Stewardship Program
Hands on the Land
A seasonal invitation into land care, shared living, and relational responsibility.
"Hands on the Land"
A Land & Community Stewardship Program
A different kind of work/stay Program
The Abundance Community Farm "Hands on the Land: A Land & Community Stewardship" residential program, which runs from May to the end of October, is an invitation to remember a new, yet ancient way of being human — one rooted in land, with shared labour, and real belonging. In a time of ecological and social unraveling, we return to land and community as teachers. At Abundance Community Farm, we tend soil and relationships side by side, learning how shared work, compassionate communication, and reverence for the Earth can restore what has been fragmented by individualism and extraction.
Through regenerative farming, shared living, and relational practices, participants learn not only how to grow food, but how to live together with care, accountability, and presence. This is a space to practice a more ecocentric, connected way of life — one our collective future depends on.
This is a 15 hours work per week land and community stewardship residential program in exchange for vegetables and fruits from our gardens, housing, mentorship, and learning. This program weaves regenerative agriculture with emotional regulation and relational skill-building, and lived experience of community. This is not ordinary volunteering — it is an invitation to grow the inner and outer capacities needed to steward land, community, and self for the benefit of future generations.
Hands in the soil. Feet on the ground.
Learning what it means to belong.
A Seasonal Residential Program Rooted in Land, Community, and Stewardship
Meeting the Challenges of our Times in a Grounded Way
What is unfolding in the world on multiple levels–political, social, economic, environmental–is calling us to fundamentally change the way we are in the world, how we relate to ourselves, to each other, to the Earth and to all the beings that call her home. To move through this polycrisis in a way that supports Life rather than destruction, we need to unlearn the myths that have brought us to this critical crossroad in the story of human kind on this beautiful blue planet we call home. We need to remember our collective embodied emotional intelligence and learn the social, emotional and relational skills that will enable us to work together as we imagine what else is possible.
Remembering an Older Way of Being Human
The Abundance Community Farm "Hands on the Land" program is an invitation to remember an older way of being human — one rooted in land, shared labor, and belonging. In a time of ecological and social unraveling, we return to land and community as teachers.
Remembering an older way of being human is not nostalgia, it is a return to rhythm, reciprocity, and remembering our place within the web of life. It is remembering that we belong to the land, not the other way around. That food comes from soil tended with care. That living well requires interdependence, shared responsibility, and humility. Here, we practice slowing down enough to listen, to the seasons, to one another, and to the wisdom that lives in our bodies and lineages. This remembering is not about recreating the past, but about reclaiming the relational intelligence needed to steward a viable future.
Land, Community, and Practice
ACF’s "Hands on the Land program” weaves regenerative organic farming with shared living and relational practice. Participants contribute approximately 15 hours per week to the care of our vegetable gardens, food forest, greenhouse, animal care, and medicine garden. In exchange, they receive food from the land, a room in shared housing, mentorship, relational practices, community and opportunities to learn by living.
In addition to tending crops and soil, participants are invited into practices that support community relational healing and resilience: consent culture, emotional regulation, circling, nonviolent communication, and simple ritual ways of honouring the land and each other.
These practices are not add-ons; they are the social and emotional infrastructure that makes regeneration possible, and they are embedded in the way Abundance Community Farm aims to be in relationship with land, community and the wider web of life.
Community as Initiation
We are honest about community. Living and working together can be deeply nourishing, and it will also surface our edges, unconscious habits, triggers, patterns and shadows. Here, community is understood as an initiatory path: one that requires self-awareness, emotional responsibility, and the capacity to stay present when things are uncomfortable.
This program is for people who are already engaged in their own inner work and who have practices to regulate their emotions, and for self-awareness, reflection, and accountability (or those who are willing to learn). Participants are expected to own their emotions, take responsibility for their impact, and seek support without offloading their healing onto others.
Designed for stays of two months or longer, this program invites both the outer work of farming and the inner work of relationship.
In a time of ecological and social unraveling, we return to land and community as teachers.
Our Wish for You and for the Earth
Our wish is that those who join this program deepen their capacity to live in reciprocal relationship with land, community, and self. That through daily practice, shared responsibility, and steady presence, participants grow the skills and inner orientation needed to contribute to a more regenerative future that centers all life and actively restores biodiversity, and community.
Our wish for the Earth is that each person who passes through this place carries forward a lived understanding of stewardship; one expressed not as ideology, but as embodied practice in the places and communities they touch next.
If you feel ready to commit to this kind of learning and contribution, we invite you to apply and step into the work with us.
Our aim is for you to leave more embodied, grounded, self aware, resourced, and with the skills and capacity to steward land and community.
In this webinar we will cover
Frequently asked questions
