Where do you start writing when you have the freedom to write about anything at all?

That’s too difficult for me to answer. There are so many things that happen in one day, let alone the one hundred days that have passed since I last wrote a Friday post. Plus the writing process is supposed to be meditative, not a mentally exhausting bringing together of all the places my energy could go.

This season I feel there’s more of a distinction between my personal life and Boodaville. Of course they are still very closely connected, but now I have big things in my life that are not Boodaville – like going on adventures for four months with the kids, planning how and where to live when Kira finishes primary school. So maybe this platform is not the place for writing about that – although it all plays in very closely with the “Permaculture Design” of my own life.

Boodaville isn’t just me any more either. There are currently two contracted employees (me and Carlos) who take regular money from the EU funded non-formal education projects we coordinate and facilitate. We have some amazing and close collaborators who are working with us now or starting in Jan 2024: Elena is writing EU projects, Jessica is planning a move back to live at Boodaville Finca with her partner Stefan and will be working on financial planning and creating a right livelihood there, Emma in Barcelona will be helping as a mentor on Boodaville Barcelona and particpating in some 2024 projects after the end of her volunteering, and Roser is a mentor and collaborator in the Boodaville Caseres projet – now with a Kindergarten!

We hope to get a grant to employ an IT person, which is desperately needed because the website has some massive errors. In fact congratulations on arriving to this page and not ending up in some weird flashing advert.

It’s exciting the number of strategic decisions that get made every week about planning projects for the future. Well I’m hoping that will slow down now!! I think we made them all.

changes for 2024

One big change is that we will not really have long-term volunteers next year. There will be some “Boodaville volunteer” projects, but most of the tasks they do will be either online/admin tasks in Barcelona, working with neighbourhood projects in Poble Sec, or working at the new site with Roser. Read more here if you want to know about that! 

So what will we be doing at Boodaville Finca without long-term volunteers?

Anna’s big idea (to be tweaked and improved with Jessica) is that Boodaville Finca will be open for visitors and volunteers from the first Friday of each month, for 11 days. We will have the activity permit, and we will run workshops, exchanges, group volunteering and guided tours. Then the rest of the month the site is closed to visitors so Jessica and Stefan can live in peace and quiet.

I’ve been looking back through the annual reports from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and we got LOADS done those years. I think a model where we have planning time quietly with no one around, and then big collaborative short-term work weeks, will help us move forward with site development. Plus the educational activities will reach a much larger public, for example a group of twenty, five times a year, instead of a group o 6 all year round. In theory we should be able to combine the long-term volunteers with the events, but the week to week mentoring and admin for the ESC projects is very time-consuming.

So will you have enough funding for the flat in Caseres and other expenses?

What a good question to bring me back down to Earth. We are looking for Boodaville collaborators or a family from Barcelona, who want to rent a permanent room in Caseres village. The rest of the rent will be covered by the ESC project and visitors. We haven’t found anyone who wants to rent the room yet – It’s about 200-250 euros a month including bills, depending on how many people share the room.

And the other expenses: Anna and Jessica will look for more paid work / extra funding with the time freed up by not doing ESC.

Once the paid activities get going we actually hope to increase the overall income – I’ll leave it to the financial planning department for now. Maybe we make a business plan and get a loan to cover some costs during the first year. Our first ever loan. We could be like all the other businesses and households and run on debt. (That’s not really the plan. I love our low-budget, build up slowly, don’t pay into the debt based economy approach. Many projects are funded by capital built up from working in non-ethical jobs or inheritance, or are run on debt. We had none of these things, it was just a long, slow, slog)*

And what else is going on with the organisation you run Lou?

Well I’m glad you asked. Just this week we had the deadline for sending off a bunch of Erasmus plus projects, and then I had a breathing space to create an overview of Autumn 2023, so here it is. Please see our Opportunities page for links to go with projects you find interesting:

• BioRNE  – 27, 28 , 29 Octoer we are co-hosting a Permaculture Weekend in Fuentespalda!
• Tree-planting : We will plant 1500 trees and bushes 18-21 Nov 2023 from Life TERRA. This fits in the broader “Rovira Regenerativa” project and yes – we do need help!
• Volunteering 2024 : the call for the 3 volunteers from Jan – July 2024 is open.
• Volunteering 2023 : We have a team of 5 on site for a busy autumn, and of course there’s loads of admin to do for this project.
• Accounting : We have a very positive relationship with our new bookkeeper Toni. He’s my favourite of everyone so far and as long as I do accounting every Monday things are organised and people get paid.
• Accreditation : We are applying for an accreditation for Erasmus+. If this is approved we will get funding for the next 6 years confirmed by the end of the year.
• Sanilles 2024 : We sent an application for a Youth Exchange in June in the Pyrenees. Funding still to be approved.
• Rió Algars 2024 : we sent an application for a Solidarity Project – a youth project in/near Caseres. Funding still to be approved
• Paid work : Romania project, Rió Algars project, and Anna needs to find more. There will be news on this soon, related to Rovira Regenerativa. (Heads up : I will be asking for 12€)
• Project Admin 2023 : Ah, those pesky final reports
• Boodaville Finca stuff : Making the finca plan work and getting on with site improvements and implementing the permaculture site design.
• Rovira Regenerativa Coordination : I suppose we should add this to the list. It ties in with paid work, and will hopefully come back to life. The LIFE funding deadline is next week, anyone? (That’s an in-joke!)

*For the purposes of radical transparency I should disclose that I have actually received inheritance money to the value of 30 000 euros over the 15 years of the project, which included buying the land outright. I also took a personal loan in 2015 for 6000 euros which was paid back within a year, and we also did the Boodaville Bonds scheme, also fully paid back now)