This week has been a whirlwind of excitement, I’ve spent more time chatting to other adults than in the whole of the rest of this year I think!
Right now I’m feeling great about professional life – we seem to have found a way to fund Rovira Regenerativa – more detail below; and things at Boodaville are moving in a good direction. I managed to get the monthly accounts done and the spreadsheet is serving it’s function with some room for improvement.
I had an interesting conversation about “living from grants” as a business model for our future. Honestly, and I need to find a way to explain this, I don’t feel bad about living from grants and donations. I mean, in the end we are a non-profit legal entity, with an “impact first” attitude and frankly most of us are working voluntarily a lot of the time. To what extent can we be “economically sustainable” but not “capitalists”? I guess that’s where my thinking is now. Even though we may officially be selling “tourism”, what we are providing is deeply educational. I was thinking that this morning in Barcelona, where we have a huge problem with tourism. I love seeing coach loads of school groups – that’s exactly what teenagers should be doing, and that is “education”.. where is the line between educational visits and tourism?
Anyway, on with the updates for this week…
Boodaville finca and Rovira Regenerativa
Our four volunteers are settled in to village life and have been working at Boodaville Finca this week to activate and add Biochar to the Food Forest. Before they added it they took samples of the soil, and they have a homework project to look up some soil tests at this link recommended by Carol. Then just before they leave in 4 months, we will do tests again to see any differences! We have also left one of the zones as a control, with no Biochar. Honestly – the quantity we added wasn’t that much, but I was very happy with the activation and feel it was “fully charged”, so let’s see how this experiment turns out.
Other jobs were
– planting courgette and lettuce in the wicking beds – the only annual production on our drought resistant site.
– amazing work pruning the vines in the Rovira Regenerativa vineyard.
– planting grape cuttings next to some of the dead vines and as a windbreak in the food forest.
Rovira Regenerativa has been moving forward in leaps and bounds this week. After a meeting with Carol and Pymeralia on Monday we are looking at a bid which includes creating a plant, tree and seed propagation nursery in Caseres. This is a big decision and many of us are now thinking about how well it fits with the overall Rovira Regenerativa objectives. It would be a great way to provide all the seeds, bushes and trees we want as part of the Regenerative Agroforestry / Syntropic design that is being done these months. Could it be a future income stream?
The vision for the nursery, co-created with Jack and Jacqueline on Monday is beautiful, with a polytunnel structure, a 1.5m stone wall around for weather protection. Space inside for trays of cuttings, growing trees and bushes we need for our design. Sand pits to stop the ants. Shade covers that are made of natural materials. Installations for agricultural water, a small solar system for .. well a kettle. Then outside a community native plants seed and cuttings propagation area. This will look like weeds to many people – big bushes of flowering plants with lots of biodiversity. We can explain why these species are so important for successional agriculture, collect seeds, and allow people to take cuttings. There will also be an area for seed training, where we grow species such as broad beans and sorghum over a few years to allow them to adapt to our local climate, and then sell/gift these adapted seeds to other soil regeneration projects in the very local area.
What do you think? We would love to hear your comments and thoughts about the beginnings of this design!
As a summary of the grant we are looking at I could say that for a 100k project the aim is to cover 40k of total costs paid by Boodaville/ other grants, we need to spend 24k before we can get it reimbursed, and 36k we receive at the beginning of the project. Obviously not all types of costs will be covered by the grant, but the more jobs we create the better!
I’m also very pleased to say that we are achieving the seasonal goals set in November for Rovira Regenerativa. The pruning is finished, the first step of the Seeds as Fertilizer experiment has been completed. By the end of April – with the help of Nick and our Boodaville volunteers – we will have added about 2.5 tonnes of manure and compost to the vineyard. That may not sound like much for 2 hectares of land – but we are working within our limited means and it is the BEST manure in Spain from Windchaser Ranch!
my permaculture / eco activities
I spent a stunning weekend in Alta Garrotxa reconnecting with Kate Curtis who worked closely with Boodaville from 2016 – 2019. It was a special trip back to Europe from her homeland of South Africa. We visited some beautiful rivers, bridges, volcanoes very close to her heart.
On Sunday evening I visited Can Cava and met the donkeys at Fran’s place for the first time. She has a finca near the coast where they traditionally grow olive trees in rocks. I had some lovely conversations imagining how our ancestors managed to get those trees established.
I was really enjoying spreading the concept of “appropriate technology” this week. When we talk about the type of farming our ancestors did many generations ago, we are not harking back to times of old for the sake of it. We are often looking at all the methods available, including modern intensive and environmentally degrading techniques, and recognising that low-tech natural methods ARE the most appropriate technology. I heard someone talking about producing natural wine on BBC 6music on Sunday morning and thought – but hang on, we’re not producing natural wine because we are nostalgic about our grandparents – we are doing it because working WITH nature and not against it is the best design to align with planetary health and for people to thrive.
other Boodaville projects
The webpage with all our opportunities this year summarises the other upcoming projects.
The organisation of the RegenerACT youth exchange is going well.. We need to borrow some more tents if you have one sitting in the cupboard!
The Rio Algars project is closed and the final report has been sent off.
We will hopefully have our Boodaville Barcelona volunteers back in July – but where will they live?
overall admin of the Association
The overall admin is going smoothly now, the financial situation is fine for the rest of the year as long as we get the money from some of projects from this round by July. We have the Kit Digital approved!
I still need to go through in detail the conditions of the license to open as an Natural Classroom. The flush toilet will need to built at some point soon. It’s all about the budget, and the projects we get approved in May. Fingers crossed that everything is on time at the National Agency this year.
The website is functioning without malware still! And I’ve figured out how to do 1 click translations with a flag at the top of the page. We need to take the leap to move to a new host. The old one doesn’t want to let us go, but I am very happy to move to a smaller, closer company Krystal, that have some ethics and use renewable energy among other good practices.
We are in touch with Pedro and Maru who seem like a great option to work on the communication strategy! I’ll speak more with them on Monday.
Happy weekend everyone – see you at Flors al Mercat!
