I’m writing this on the 31st so Halloween hasn’t actually happened yet. But that’s how the world is going, extending the holiday for a week or more. I heard of trick or treating happening last weekend, and saw a face painted at 8am Tuesday morning. The teenagers here celebrated last night by putting chemicals on their skin and laughing a lot. I still hold some hope that we make it to the forest for my chosen activity of the weekend.
Parenting (Warning – includes stories of vomit)
This week has been a rollercoaster for me, ranging from feeling incredibly healthy and happy on Tuesday to being collapsed in bed with the bug, unable to properly manage to feed Joanna on Friday. She’s suffering a gastroenteritis. On two different days she vomited in my bed in the middle of the night. Last night after cleaning it up we both squished into her small bed. She woke up at 5am, I grabbed her when she said she needed to poo and made a run to the bathroom. I tripped and nearly dropped her thus peeing myself quite a lot from the scare and only getting her 90% of the way to the toilet where she shat all over herself and her trousers.
While all this was happening there were three 13 year olds asleep in the front room, lying in their own popcorn after going out for a Tunnel of Terror, reasonably successful trick or treating, and a scary movie. Well it all makes for good material right? And every parent’s been there, (or somewhere close). Actually these cleaning up sessions in the night are better than doing it in the daytime, you can’t really remember it all afterwards.
AI (you can’t get anywhere without talking about this these days)
Maybe I should be talking to AI about Joanna’s multi-day sickness right now actually? I could be asking advice, instead of sharing the gross details of geriatric parenting. I saw something actually scary this week: when I picked up my daughter after school she was laughing at her laptop wearing headphones. I wondered who she was chatting with, or what kind of awful video she was watching, but no… she was laughing in a conversation with chatGPT. It turned out that she was asking for help with her Spanish homework. I have seen her benefit a LOT from AI summarising notes, or giving her information in the format of a story. Which just brings me back around to the basic “Artificial” part of it – many times the problem isn’t the AI, it’s the fact that the task itself is quite bullshitty, or at the very least being done in a bad way. Learning Spanish = good. Learning Spanish by memorising a list of facts and then repeating them in an exam that causes you stress = bad. And in my life: Planning carefully what you are going to do on a youth exchange to make it a fantastic joyful learning experience = good. Redacting that planning into a 52 page PDF that another human (or not) is going to skim read as part of their administrative office job = bad. Well, also understandable in many ways – and we do like the money to do great things!
On site at Rovira Regenerativa vineyard
We had an excellent Regenerative Weekend, with an easy flow, great weather, and work done to complete the first phase of the Hidro Design and continue our cover crop management experiment.
For me, these weekends create a space to put the Rovira Regenerativa project first. Before the each weekend I go back through the design and yearly targets, tweaking along with the team and other consultants how we are going to move forward with the resources available. We are still actively fundraising to be able to achieve the vineyard Regenerative Agriculture targets, getting closer to the optimum target we set in the Crowdfunder before Summer.
What we are doing better with each event is a holistic Regenerative Cultures approach. We work in partnership with more and more local and regional producers, participants and facilitators.
For the participants we are demonstrating how to do things together, and sharing with people from very different backgrounds. Some words from last weekends’ participant Mike, (which will sound great on LinkedIn):
“I felt like I was part of a fluid emergent process, and creating something based on our collective and individual experiences engaging with each other and our environment”
(I hope to share soon a link to all his words!)
Our learning from the weekend has left us with the question “Can we get sheep in the vineyard by Autumn 2027?”, that would be for the cutting down of the cover crop. In April we could do the “human roller crimp educational fun” (I have an image of a RuPaul drag race maxi-challenge team presenting this title) with 14 participants at a time using our fantastic fabrications.
All will be revealed after we have a sensible conversation with a consultant this month (hopefully Sergi Caballero from Mas Les Vinyes) and put together a calendar and priority list to get serious about how hands-on fun will improve the quantity and quality of grapes produced. It would, as I may have mentioned before, really help if our non-profit had the money to collectively buy the vineyard. (“Donate here” page!)
Visitor Garden in Caseres
We have a 0€ contract to use an amazing plot in Caseres in a VERY public place. The first steps are being taken by Elvira our current volunteer and the brief is to 1) Learn about access to water and how and when it works 2) Accept help and advice from neighbours 3) Start implementing a design we have for a vegetable garden. Later on, when we have had a chance to observe and interact, we will design the next steps towards the plant nursery and native seed garden.
The MOST important thing here is that we don’t alienate the neighbours with all our weird ideas! We want them all to come to our events – What shall we do? Something for kids? A Natural Wine tasting event with our regional partners? How to we get people from the village engaged? Answers on a postcard please! (Or in the comments – humans only)
Boodaville Finca
Robin and I had our first Thursday at the finca this week. The two-weekly schedule is coming together based on patterns we see. Spaces for longer sessions for on-site jobs are 1) every other Thursday and 2) Living Permaculture weekends. This week we did:
- 80% of a long overdue task to fix the foundations of the wooden posts in the roof structure
- planted a new Peach tree (grown by our team from seed for maximum strength of connection! as all the last 10 Boodaville Finca trees have been!! – thanks Priya, Angela and Robin)
- Picked up leaves in the village to mulch the Thyme Terrace
- Planted the wicking beds with some annual winter veg
- some other stuff (we have NOT started starting to build a flsuh toilet. But we will*)
*this is designed to be a shit storm social media generator.
Other Boodaville projects
Awww.. we are on FIRE this week! We signed contracts for 200k€ to do 5 permaculture activities with young people – like this one!! You can already sign up to join us in April for the first exchange!! Hot news:::: we hope to put the DOME back up on this Exchange!!!
((FULL INFO : These are Youth Exchanges and Trainings which will be: 2 YE in Caseres (4-5 days at Boodaville Finca) 1 YE at Mas Les Vinyes, 1 YE at Sanilles, 1 Training with Carlos Buj at Casa Algaia, 1 Training in Caseres – What do we want to learn? and then 1 more Training in Spring 2028 to mop up the last of the approved budget))
We also confirmed the Boodaville Barcelona ESC volunteers for 2027!! They will be starting very soon – well one of them TOMORROW!! Welcome Fien!! – and will be helping out with social media, admin, coms- wherever they fit in best. They also dedicate half of their time to supporting projects in Barcelona related to Urban Permaculture and/or Social Permaculture.
We sent of a great application for a Solidarity Project in the Matarranya and Terra Alta region. It’s very aligned with the Regenerative Cultures / Bioregional Networks values of Rovira Regenerativa. The three elements are 1) synergising with TERRA eco-festival in Calaceite – organised by a group of “personas en regeneración“, 2) using funds to run educational activities / practical work in the vineyard 3) creating networking events bringing together eco-business people in the region with young people who want to make stuff happen.
Overall admin of the Association
Welcome Robin!!! Robin is now a contracted and paid employee of the Boodaville Association. After working with us for a year as a volunteer this is a great step, going into unchartered territory for me! We have so many collaborators and soul mates in our ecosystem who step in and work on different projects. Robin is the first to work with us for 100% of his professional life! So I’ll let you know what his actual job is, and the actual schedule in.. who knows!! This is part of the Regenerative Leadership – surfing / dancing – whatever you want to call it – and finding our way together.
Do we have enough money to buy a vineyard? As always in Permaculture the answer is “It Depends”. It may look from the outside like we haven’t been very active in the fundraising – (since the heady crazy days of Crowdfunding; sending out a thousand unanswered emails into the void, maxing out on local media networks, logging in to Linked-In more than once a month) but the reality is we sold no less than 8! bottles of wine in the last two weeks! (That’s a self deprecating joke typical of British born Anna Louise. Also 1 of those bottles was a donation of 50€) The real reality is that I have been deep in admin, applying for new projects and going far into spreadsheets to find Boodaville Association reserves that can be added to the crowdfunding pot to get ever closer to making the offer. The vineyard is IN the current version of the budget planning!! And (pending checks and other spending that we need to add) we are 10k short for making the offer we prepared… but if our proposal were to be accepted we don’t need that 10k until Jan 2028. Mike our fantastic participant had some incredibly positive comments on our situation – he knows how business people do stuff (I don’t) and basically those kind of numbers are fekking awesome.
“You’re in a position that many businesses would envy. Not many organizations or even businesses can come close to purchasing the land they operate on”
So shall we do it?
Anna Louise profile : Risk adverse, dedicated to the cause when her kids are asleep, not a “high-achiever” in the capitalist system (but very very dedicated to a life of gardens, meditation, silliness and rest), currently craving a luxury in short supply: old-growth diverse forest to walk in.
I love writing!!! If you read all this that’s freaking great! and writing it isn’t just enjoyable, it’s what I need to do! So let’s hope I’m back again soon.