All the images this week are from Sara, our volunteer in Caseres. I am taking time to enjoy them now as I post, and imagining myself being there with them at the beautiful Spring ceremony Jessica organised up at La Gessera. I’m taking a few breaths and wondering when I got so busy and stressed during the last week that I forgot to stop, stretch, breathe, or go to the park for a cup of tea.

offloading and reflecting (maybe ignore this and skip to the next section)

Well, the renewed vigour of the drilling next door, the interrupted sleep and diarrhoea from Joanna, the homework demands and nits from Kira, the high stress work situation of Bernat, the lack of movement on my own to do lists and upcoming report deadlines have quite a lot to do with it. Plus the EU still haven’t transferred money owed so Boodaville needs to take out another loan to cover payments, and of course, this is the week after the passing of Bernat’s mother which was intense, emotional and all engaging from Tuesday until we got home after the funeral last Saturday night. Even today I find myself thinking about how I can make way for Bernat to avoid the worst of the high stress situations in his life this weekend, and piling up my own stress and workload in order to do that. When I say work here, I am talking about child-care and household management as well as Boodaville.

I think we are all doing too much. 

On the bright side

I am incredibly lucky to have access to a loan and am so grateful for that. I am also pleased that my effort to help with Kira’s habitat homework has had brilliant results – she has taken some of the Biochar from our workshop to school today as part of her presentation on the Amazon rainforest habitat!!

As well as answering the questions from her teacher she included two “curiosities”:

Firstly as she was told by Nick Park in the workshop–

The people of the amazon used biochar in their agriculture hundreds of years ago and because biochar stays in the soil and helps the soil long-term, it contributed to the forest growth. Humans helped the incredible rainforest ecosystem become what it is!

Secondly as she was told by me and the Eden Project giant rainforest bubble–

The trees make their own rain. They make their own clouds because of transpiration and then it rains.  

I didn’t go so far as to mention that if too many trees are cut down, they will no longer have this ability to make rain, the rainforest will reach an irreversible tipping point and will stop being the habitat that it is and will turn into a grassland. This is why the Amazon is a concern for all of us, and a World Heritage site – “the lungs of the earth”. But you can hardly even google information about it these days, at least in Spanish, because all the results are about the company with the same name. 

UPDATES ON 2023 OPPORTUNITIES

The places for the Youth Worker Training in Portugal are now filled. 

We still have places for the two youth exchanges in May (Active Permaculture at Mas Les Vinyes and RegenerACTion in Portugal). We have a few applications for volunteering in Boodaville Caseres but we want more! 

Sanilles in June- we don’t have funding approved yet, but we really need to find participants to “save the date” as we expect a successful outcome. 

Site Manager – we have the site manager role covered until August with Alex currently in the role, and Sara ready to take over if he moves on before then. We are looking for applications for the role of Site Manager and Volunteer Mentor starting in September 2023. We will make a new appointment based on the best person for the role between all the applicants. If you are interested in coming to live and work and manage Boodaville Caseres please get in touch to organise visits and training before August to see if you role is for you!

ROVIRA REGENERATIVA COMING BACK TO LIFE

I looked back at my plan for the year and am amazed to see that the vague idea to get back into Rovira Regenerativa in March became a reality without any pushing from me. 

After getting the trees from LifeTERRA I was invited to a meeting with Kathy from Transfer consultancy (the same organisation as Volterra who’ve run Life projects forever). I had floated the idea of being a beneficiary in a larger project – I was hoping to open a door to receiving a donation of up to 30 000 euros to be a small part of a much bigger project. BUT the door I opened was nearly a hundred times bigger than that. This was the meeting we were trying to get back in 2020 when we had a draft of a valley scale regenerative agriculture / community resilience / education Life project and were looking for someone to write and coordinate this BIG IDEA project. 

The door is open and it is a little overwhelming, but also amazing. This fills the gaps in the 2020 proposal. The next step is to look again at the what we wrote, find out who wants to be involved, share the information sent to us by Kathy (which is a lot) and then have another meeting to see how our project could work. Transfer consultancy will help us find a coordinating organisation and other partners and then write the project. 

The project never really stopped in practical terms and we’ve just updated the instagram with descriptions, videos and images of the planting and regenerative agroforestry work we are doing and how it can be scaled up with more resources.  

Please see more on the blog page and fill in the form if you want to get involved in what could be a valley scale, integrated, regenerative cultures and soil restoration project. 

We will have a meeting next week on Thursday 30th March, time to be confirmed. If you want to join and find out more please fill in that form!

BOODAVILLE CASERES AND BOODAVILLE BARELONA

• No progress on fixing the roof or getting permissions
• No rain yet to fill the new balsas
• Great photos and spring food forest work at the Boodaville Finca
• Sara and Emma were together for a week in Caseres enjoying bike rides, river paddling and getting on brilliantly with all their tasks. (and participating in the online on-arrival training from INJUVE)
• Alex is staying another three months and we had a meeting with Klif who will be joining Boodavillle Caseres 6th April
• Baloo will be leaving Boodaville Barcelona in April
• The Barcelona accomodation situation is solved for the current volunteers.