OFIW (On Friday’s I write)

I feel surprisingly organised (OFIW)

Updates from Boodaville and Rovira this week include news from the vineyard! While Lou has been writing for Looby (hooray!!) and using patterns to plan out the next months.

I slept last night. I fell asleep with Joanna around 9pm and didn’t really wake up until 7am. This is a strange and new sensation for me, and maybe why I feel organised.

Joanna (and me) just about made it through the drama of celebrating a third birthday during the first full week of school. She had some proper tantrums in the classroom, but today, after a walking through the rain adventure, she was relaxed about staying in the classroom.

The third birthday also marked the end of an intense period of moving, cleaning, learning the new weekly patterns of child care and activities. Without going into too much detail I’ll just say that now I know which days I do which kind of tasks, and also my daughter plays the cello.

I really need to by some waterproof boots.

Boodaville finca and rovira regenerativa

Both Jessica and Angela have been at the finca and the vineyard this week. Angela took loads of data about which trees are alive, and how the vines are doing. There’s zero harvest this year! They also got some strimming done to keep the fennel around the vines under control and leave the cut stalks as ground cover.

Jessica, among other things, was planting winter veg in the wicking beds. After a final experiment we have concluded that the larger wicking bed has a massive leak and is irreparable – it lasted 7 years.

my permaculture / eco activities

I am so very excited to have written a contribution to Looby McNamara’s next book. She said it would be wonderful to include my piece about the importance of “integration” in the design of planning the massive European trip. So fingers crossed it makes it into the book!! I am very keen to speak, write,and make presentations about how I made our adventure happen, and this perfect opportunity came my way.

Last weekend I attended both the BiorNE conference at Mas Les Vinyes AND an asamblea for the cooperative housing project I’ve joined called La Fábrica de la Transición.

At BiorNE I caught up with Sam and drank some Torres regenerative wine with Oliver Goshey.

At La Fábrica we seeded trees in the vegetable garden and met the neighbour who is starting a commecial organic farm on the next plot. We are looking for more families to join the project and come and live at La Fábrica – the next open visit is 12 October.

other Boodaville projects

There is one solidarity project on the go which is Ecologistas de Rio Algars and I have a meeting about our next event.. now!

We are applying for another solidarity project next week – to run from January 2025. We are looking for young people to get involved in creating a community around Green Skills Gatherings at different farms and projects (including Boodaville!). We’ll include a special event where we invite all our ex-volunteers back to Boodaville for a week of fun practical projects and celebration!

overall admin of the Asociation

Well we still have no money and a cash flow crisis. Sorry everyone.

The admin is done to get the money our ON MONDAY! as long as it arrives.

Lou

Lou - I started on the Boodaville path when I bought the land in Matarranya in 2008 and have dedicated an incredible amount of time, and not very many euros, to building up the project over the years.

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Back in BCN (OFIW)

Lou is back in Barcelona after 6 months away on adventures. This post is an update about what's going on with Boodaville Permaculture Association.

So here I am, back at my desk for the first time since February, and writing an OFIW post for the first time since.. I don’t know. Things got incredibly busy before the trip; creating that adventure is a whole story, or even a book in the making.

I will publish a post with the top 50 photos as soon as I have the technological capability. And for now – I just hope you can read this post! We STILL have some kind of malware in the wordpress, but are one step closer to getting a government grant to employ a website manager since I spoke to our accountant last week.

So what would a Friday post look like this season?

Well there will inevitably be comments on how I am: Today I’m fantastic because I did some incredibly successful parenting this week and got both kids tucked up for the night by 21:30. This is an all time record and will hopefully become normal. I aim to have evenings and children that aren’t so tired they are like zombies.

Then I think it’s really important to let people know how Boodaville is going, maybe with a bit of Rovira Regenerativa thrown in.

My exciting permaculture / eco activities would be a good section and I hope there will be many things to report.

Then an important part of any post would be other Boodaville projects – what’s coming up, where we might need participants, ideas or help.

And for my own benefit I guess it would be very useful for a comment on the overall admin of the Aso and what’s occupying my time this week. Ok – let’s give that a shot!

How is Boodaville Finca going? and Rovira Regenerativa?

Thanks to Angela and Jessica who have become regular visitors, and are supporting the overall vision and strategic plan of the association we have an INCREDIBLY tidy and organised space. A few of our favourite Permaculture Design examples have been lost over the years and we are working to reintroduce them. The land is suffering after a very harsh drought, we got 60mm last week — let’s hope for more.

In about a month we should have another nail biting moment when we receive news about our application to run the “Rural Classroom” at Boodaville Finca. If it’s a YES then we are FINALLY absolutely ready to open and start offering workshops and guided tours legally!! If it’s something else then we have some serious issues.

Jessica is onsite right now preparing a winter veg bed, and showing our new volunteers how it is possible to live at Boodaville – water, energy, waste, comfort. Ooh and hopefully making some compost tea as well – with a barrel of whey she brought down from her current home with the goats in Navarra.

Rovira Regenerativa – well there’s no grape harvest, Angela is monitoring the vines, we are planning to keep working to see what happens next year.

The 1000 trees we planted were looking pretty good in June and I’ll be honest.. I didn’t dare go back and look at the end of August. So you’ll have to wait for more info on that.

My exciting permaculture / eco activities

Well I’m reading “At Work in the Ruins” by Dougald Hine and absolutely loving it. I folded down the page about the difference between knowledge – arm’s length facts – and “knowing” which is when we let the knowledge in and it becomes part of our way of being.

I really feel I’m in the second category; and that teaching Environmental Systems and Societies in a white classroom was just knowledge and less wisdom.

And my other most exciting of adventures is an invite to submit a story to Looby McNamara’s next book. This is huge, and a tight deadline. I’ll be achieving one of my goals to share more about the Europe Trip and how and why I designed that into our lives.

And, as someone who sometimes says yes to things now.. I have a teaching gig up at WildLab in two weeks! I’m not sure about the details and have a call about that.. well ..now!

So for more categories and another update I’ll be back next week.

Anna Louise