by Ken Bryson
Photo by Ken Bryson
When Rony Lec and Myriam Legault moved to their 100-acre property south of Desboro five years ago from Guatemala, they brought more than their young family. They brought traditional varieties of amaranth, corn, beans, and squash that represented decades of work preserving Mesoamerican food traditions.
For over 20 years, Rony had worked in seed production and food security in Guatemala’s Maya region, co-founding the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute and running it alongside Myriam while raising their two young children. Their focus was on what Rony calls “undervalued plants” that are highly nutritious but lack economic markets while holding the key to fighting malnutrition. Migrating to Canada, they saw an opportunity to continue this work, establishing Luna Mia as a farm that honors the Earth, nurtures biodiversity, and shares knowledge rooted in traditional agriculture.
At the heart of Luna Mia’s work is amaranth, what Rony describes as a “star plant” that is both highly nutritious and remarkably resilient. The Mayans cultivated it as a staple, and Rony is working to introduce it to Canadian farmers and food systems.
Amaranth’s nutritional profile is impressive. The leaves, when young, rank as a top vegetable in terms of nutrition, containing more iron than spinach along with protein, minerals, and vitamins. The seeds can be popped to create a cereal or ground into flour. But what truly sets amaranth apart is its bioavailability. While the human body can only digest 30 to 40 percent of the nutrients in soy, amaranth boasts over 95 percent bio-digestion, making its nutrition immediately accessible.
“It’s usually used as a nutritional complement more than as a base for food,” Rony explains. Like hemp seeds, it can be added to yogurt, granola, or flour for tortillas and bread, boosting concentrated nutrition in everyday meals.
Luna Mia produces amaranth seeds for companies like Hawthorn Farm and Heirloom Seeds, as well as seeds for Chocosol, a Toronto-based chocolate company. Yet demand remains limited. “It’s something that the Canadian farmers and public don’t know or use that much,” he notes, even though companies like Kellogg have already begun marketing it.
Working just two acres intensively for seed production, Luna Mia specializes in Mesoamerican crops, including corn, beans, squash, and peppers alongside amaranth. The farmers also harvest many edible leaves central to Mayan diets, like lamb’s quarters, which grow abundantly in Grey County but usually go unharvested and uneaten. “A lot of those leaves are the base for Mayan diet,” Rony says, explaining that they’re typically cooked rather than eaten raw.
Photo by Ken Bryson
Luna Mia operates as an experiential education center. After 25 years of teaching in Guatemala, Rony wanted to focus more on farming itself, but the couple still offers occasional workshops and welcomes visitors seeking hands-on experience with regenerative agriculture.
“Our work has always been in that area of sharing knowledge and seeds and experience,” Rony explains. The farm serves as a living demonstration of permaculture principles; a long-term project they’re building slowly as they learn about the land and plants on their farm. Half their property remains under conservation easement as wetland forest, while the rest includes hayfields for their small sheep herd and the two acres of intensive seed production.
For Rony, agriculture has never been merely agronomic or economic. It’s fundamentally cultural. “Corn is more than just tortillas, more than just food,” he says, explaining his perspective that culture itself springs from agriculture. “Once cultures established their food system, then they started to flourish.”
Conversely, agricultural failure has toppled civilizations throughout history. Today, we face a parallel crisis: from thousands of food choices available to humans, we’ve narrowed our diet to roughly a dozen, mostly grains and carbohydrates. Thousands of corn varieties have vanished over the recent decades. “Diversity is the strength of nature,” Ronaldo insists. “Without diversity, there’s no balance.”
This loss extends beyond nutrition to ritual and ceremony. In the Mayan agricultural calendar, certain foods are eaten only once yearly in special meals that mark moments in the growing season. Fresh beans wrapped in corn leaves, for instance, create a ceremonial dish that also brings more light to maturing corn plants, balancing ritual and practicality in one act.
“Agriculture brings all the things together,” Rony reflects. “Economics, politics, culture, and ritual, everything can be tied into agriculture since this is the heart of our culture.”
In a county dominated by monoculture, including the familiar rotation of soy, corn, and wheat, Luna Mia’s diverse two acres might seem insignificant. Rony acknowledges this tension but reframes it. Industrial agriculture largely doesn’t produce food for direct human consumption, leaving small-scale farmers filling a crucial niche.
The real competition for small farms, he argues, comes from imported food produced under exploitative labour conditions that local farmers can’t and shouldn’t try to match. Says Rony, any change must come from consumers demanding real, local food grown with dignity for both land and people.
As Rony and Myriam transform their property, they’re growing more than seeds. They’re cultivating connections between past and present, and playing an important role maintaining genetic diversity and traditional knowledge that will play an important role in this era of climate change.
