On Friday’s I write – Project updates and Kate Raworth on Regenerative Business

Last week I came back to writing after a long gap and tried a little self-care experiment asking for some appreciation. This was inspired by the appreciation cards we do for each other on courses – a lovely take away at the end of a hard week, with all the positive comments in one place. This little action worked, and I believe that as well as lifting me, it is a positive experience for all who participated and read the comments. A little reflection time stepping out from the mundane. Thank you so much to everyone who joined in – some real blasts from the past as well.

I am settling in well to mornings without Joanna, and after two weeks am feeling a little more on top of things, the next challenge is to find child care in Caseres village during the summer, finish organising the summer trip to UK – (Does anyone know any nice permaculture projects in Wales that might host us for a visit?) and then the big beast of looking at the economics for the year and how the resources, needs, offers and euros will circulate during the rest of 2022 and then 2023. 

Regenerative Economics

Talking of economics, I am finally finally finishing Doughnut Economics the book – here’s a nice quote, 

Regenerative industrial design can only be fully realised if it is underpinned by regenerative economic design.

What’s said in the book, and the reason it is so important, is that economics underpins everything. That is where the change and most importantly the paradigm shift, needs to come. The economic system (and money) are social constructs and could, and should be tools to make our lives function well. The biosphere is reality and our only home, this is where the real limits are. We can create a new system, within our own household, our own neighbourhood, but maybe not yet in large scale industrial design. How can I be positive when you’ve just told me that the entire economic system has to change? Surely I have no influence over that? Well no, most people don’t have the power to influence a country (and the one’s that do are lying buffoons, and they promote themselves as lying buffoons and somehow that’s popular). We all have influence over something. Looby McNamara talks about the positive life we live if we stick to our circle of influence and work at making it bigger and bigger over time. Kate Raworth talks about talking to people with open doors, and growing that way. Doughnut Economics is catching on, it’s even in IB text-books in schools. In fact that brings me to one of last weeks crazy ideas – if I want to teach Doughnut Economics.. which I do, the perfect place to start would be offering sessions in secondary schools to IB students. My circle of influence, let’s get as many of them as possible writing about it in their exams this summer!

maranya festival – tickets go on sale 1st june

Plans are afoot!! 24-26 June we are having a party and you are all invited. Vianna has been working her socks off preparing the information pdf so you can all find out how to get your tickets! We’ll be at WildLab farm, an hour from Barcelona, mixing up the usual amazing activites, Uncle Jam with inspiring permaculture workshops, relaxing in nature and by the swimming pool, dancing and boucing and smiling, and most importantly the gathering of brilliant people and making beautiful connections. See more at @maranyafest or join the conversation with us at facebook. 

boodaville caseres

Even though I’m in Barcelona I’m feeling very connected with the Caseres team this week which I love. We are in the geeky process of mapping out and creating a digital version of all the plants and trees in our food forest system, our new strawberry mini-food forest area, and the thyme terrace project where we are scaling up towards actual agriculture. We have over 63 different plants and trees to water by hand, every 3 days.. except not this week because it RAINED!!! The watering by hand serves the added function of observing, touching, learning which is extremely important as we go on learning about how to manage different species in our valley. In the future, when we know better what works it can be scaled up with less of the personal touch – but we will still run a highly labour intensive project in the long-run as part of an efficient, regenerative, ecological design. If the economic regeneration moves along in line with our plan (come on Kate!) then we will also find that machinery, fuel, excess water use become incredibly expensive in euros, whereas labour is valued, and taxed less. 

We are also active on instagram (@boodavillepermaculture) these days, sharing bit by bit, the full story of our food forest project. 

boodaville barcelona

We hold our open Eco-meets in Poble Sec, on carrer Blai in front of the library every Friday 17h – 19h. Anyone is welcome to come and meet us and to get involved in projects in the neighbourhood. We’re planning an excursion to learn about plants, especially edible ones, and especially very very edible ones that can be foraged from Montjuic – with a cooking and tasting session at the community garden afterwards! 

The most exciting thing I saw this week was in the Clot neighbourhood, where I’m mentoring a group of young people in a European Solidarity Corps project. The youth are creating the Green City Lab project, and the huge, ambitious, beautiful and city changing “Hort del Clot” project is being run from the same place. Kait and Julia are the energy and coordination behind this project which has already raised tens of thousands of euros of public money to build a green space/vegetable garden. They are implementing Urban Permaculture at a neighbourhood level, with a reach of thousands and thousands of local residents. Everything they are working on to coordinate and design the way this space works and provides and gifts the community will be shared – open source – for other neighbourhoods to learn from. Our Poble Sec team are very excited to visit them in June and accelerate our own project. We already have the green space, we need the tools to link projects, and different community groups together to create an effective and regenerative whole! They have a sociocratic map / design of the different people and groups which is exactly what I was trying to explain to the volunteers at lunch after a sleepless night a few months ago! It is so inspiring to see and could be a wonderful tool for us. How do we create a structure that encompasses and energises and supports all the networks and groups that already exist?

So let’s see where the next week takes us all. I love my daughters more each day.