About Nourishing Grounds

Hello everybody! Welcome to Nourishing Grounds! I’m Ine and this is my space to write down my thoughts and dreams about my regenerative journey, sustainability, my healthy cooking experiments, connecting with nature and my life in Portugal.

How it Started

One morning in 2020 I woke up and the words ‘Nourishing Grounds’ flashed through my head, I wasn’t sure why but when I started to think about these words I thought how they were the perfect name for the new blog I had in mind!

I hope this blog can be a fertile ground for me and anyone who enjoys my writings. I originally started this blog to help me move my focus away from the frustration of being stuck in the covid-19 pandemic with all it’s lockdowns, regulations and limitations to a more positive place where I can grow and nourish my soul by appreciating all the good things I could still do and enjoy even in those weird times – my cooking experiments, my gardening journey, my trips into nature and some more cultural destinations, …

I had a dream to move somewhere in nature and to create a beautiful big garden where I can grow lots of food, beautiful flowers, create more biodiversity and live in a regenerative way, a place where I can actually nourish the ground and in return it can nourish me.

Fast forward to spring 2022 and I’ve taken those first steps by moving to Portugal where the journey and adventure truly begins. The first couple of months during the winter I stayed in Portimão in the Algarve but from May onwards I will actually start spending much more time on regenerative farms and retreat centers, exploring and learning all about these regenerative practices and hopefully meeting some lovely likeminded people on the way…

What is Regenerative Living?

It’s a word I slowly see more and more in the media lately though I’m not sure how commonly it’s used or known. I see it popping up all the time now but I’m a little bit attuned to the word after I did this amazing online ‘Regenerative Future’ course in the spring of 2020.

So, just in case you’re not familiar with the term, it comes down to this, for whatever you do or make (or whatever products you buy in shops) you need resources – energy, materials, time, … – and when you do things in a regenerative way you make sure those resources are replenished, and not just replenished but that they will be even more abundant than before. So that basically takes it a step further than just doing things sustainably. And it’s necessary to take that extra step if we are ever going to replenish the resources we have depleted from the earth in the last 2 centuries and putting a stop to all the loss in biodiversity.

Regenerative Gardening and Agriculture

Permaculture, biodynamic gardening, syntropic gardening, … are regenerative ways of gardening, where the aim is to have no waste, all waste is turned into resources, you design and build systems inspired by patterns in nature that are diverse, interconnected, multi-functional, energy-efficient and waste-free. And you end up with a closed loop system that nourishes the earth, constantly replenishing whatever is taken from it and it leads to a more and more balanced and abundant ecosystem with a diverse range of plants and animals all living harmoniously together.

Regenerative Living

And this is something that you can apply to everything in life. Our mass consumer culture in the last century has been extremely damaging to the earth, its resources are getting more and more depleted, manufacturing conditions in low-cost countries are often horrible for the people working there. All we see are a huge variety of products that are easy to buy, often cheap and not very durable.

Food is often grown in massive monocultures, often prone to disease and pests that gets counteracted with chemical pesticides and fertilisers which only deplete the soil and bring things out of balance even more. Most people have completely lost touch with what sort of resources and processes are necessary to create a product, in what way it’s damaging to the earth, often to the people making it and ultimately to themselves.
But it’s possible to be more aware, and to do things differently, so that’s my aim here. I’m far from perfect though and it’s a learning process, that’s why I’m calling it a journey towards a regenerative lifestyle.

And of course your can even apply this regenerative concept to your own body & mind, to your health! Making sure that the way you live your life doesn’t deplete your energy completely cause that would lead you to a burnout, and unfortunately I know all too well what that is like and I’m sure many of you do too, it’s so common these days. So it’s important to make sure you regenerate your own energy sources by taking time to relax, doing the things you love, getting grounded, going into nature, eating healthy, moving your body, connecting with friends, doing the activities that ultimately give you more energy than you put into it, …

About me

Hi guys, I’m Ine Beerten. I’m a 40 something from Belgium, currently living in Portugal. In my twenties I was an avid backpacker and spent a lot of my time traveling to lots of exotic places, mostly in Asia and Australia. In my thirties I focused on getting my creative career in illustration off the ground, worked myself into a burnout while trying, but managed to come out the other end successfully (check out my illustration work here)! And now in my forties I’m feeling the pull to get closer to nature, grow my own food in a way that’s good for the earth and myself and to live a more regenerative lifestyle in general…