Responding to the crisis (OFIW)

When I have spare mental capacity my mind always wanders back to the Rovira Regenerativa project and how we are going to make it possible, in a beautiful way, and bring many people with us on the journey. 

One of the ideas bubbling around is that we find a few “big donors” who, prior to launching a crowdfunding are committed to adding €5k to the campaign. Then I saw a post on facebook from an old friend Roger Munns, who along with another local friend John Smith have turned their passion for the ocean into amazing documentary footage of the incredible life on our planet. They are both very successful, some of the best on the planet at what they do. 

I got to thinking that maybe one of these “big donors” could be a collective from Cornwall; as well as Roger and John, and all the inspiring friends and family I have there, some other people come to mind – Chris Jones and the beavers, Tim Smit and the Eden project, Val Grainger permaculture, Hannah at Ecological Land Coop, Tim at SAS… and more… I got lost in the idea of organising an event next summer and imagining us all in a sharing circle talking about our projects and passions. Then I had the book idea..

How about as part of the crowdfunding we also create a book “Holistic Fundraising through love and connection” in which we share our methods, design and values, and also have pages sharing projects we are connected to via the campaign. Photos of the amazing ocean life and the people who made is possible for us to see it, shared visions from other ecological projects, wildlife shots of the beavers returning again to our ecosystem. I imagine a truly beautiful collection – which we could sell on site for the next decade!!!

I’m managing to feel good in spite of the state of the world this month. I’ve realised that working in ecological design and being inspired hour after hour by Holistic Financial planning, ideas of adding fungal spores to chainsaw oil, ways of regenerating soil by planting the right seeds…. I will not be slowed or dampened by the way things are going.

But it’s really catastrophic now. Humanity noticed briefly in 2019 that there was a planetary health emergency and we were going to break the systems that keep us alive, but then collectively the powerful people in the world did basically nothing. And now about 90%* of rich people just ignore what’s happening. I wonder if my pals in the UK have considered their future if the ocean currents collapse (I’m gonna ask Roger Munns what he thinks about that!!). I see death and then lockdowns in Spain because of  Climate Change Adaptation FAILS. I mean 5 years ago we were worried about the rise of Eco-fascism – but who needs eco? The noise about environmental issues was smothered and we just get plain old fascism.

This rant is not helping, or helped by the rushes of hormones that have left me raging this week! I usually start these pieces with a reflection on my own health, and it is incredible how these surges of wanting to smash things come along when the bus to school is stuck in traffic. A wonderful friend of mine has been learning about raw food recipes, and managing hormones that way. He made me think, and insipred me to focus on bringing loads more organic raw food into each day. I was craving thinly sliced white cabbage at 4am this morning when these ideas were flying around my head!!

And now onwards with projects, community and vegetables that keep me thriving.

*completely invented statistic

Boodaville finca and rovira regenerativa

Boodaville Finca is getting tidier and tidier! It’s an amazing place for permaculture living, connecting with nature and regenerating. We are working on an idea “The Boodaville Experience” to share the space (it would have to be for very limited numbers of people!).

Nick came and fixed the drain and we are moving to finally finish fixing the roof. (After the rain we had a better idea of where water gets in, so we know what weak points we want to work on)

We had an amazing weekend with Angela, Sam, Priya and Lou talking about the design for the vineyard. We talked a lot and turned that into a solid plan – we are going to implement a “Seeds as Fertilizer” experiment and get manure down in the fields before the end of the year. I’ll be sharing more about this via Instagram and the Web – and there’s one lovely conversation with Sam about how to use pruning in Syntropic Agriculture that we’ve uploaded already.

I am moving forward with the Sponsorship Mission to make time to get on with accelerating the overall Rovira Regenerativa Project. I hope that many of you will join in as a sponsor to help make the project bigger!

my permaculture / eco activities

I visited Vidalia to participate briefly in a Permaculture Teacher Training course for refugees. It was a wonderful experience – the highlight was talking to a Palestinian Permaculture Olive Framer with 3000 year-old trees who sells the oil to LUSH.

other Boodaville projects

We are offering a Biochar workshop on 21st December! We’re very happy to work with Jordi and Nick again and saw SUCH impressive results using the biochar to help our little trees survive the drought.

The Boodaville volunteers Alessandro and Olivia are nearly half way through their 6 month stay. They went to the whole course at Vidalia as volunteers and rated their experience 9/10.

The next Erasmus+ event will be in May 2025 near Boodaville – RegenerAct. We should have a meeting to look at getting more events for next year in the calendar.

overall admin of the Asociation

The financial situation is sound and thanks to some hard work by Lou we are close to having an organised, transparent, accounting system that actually tells us the funds available four our wish list : seeds, a good strimmer, animal poo without medicines, getting the next report to finalise the persmissions to open legally as a rural classroom, and much much more!

The website continues to have issues and we should move the WHOLE thing over to a new server. Add to previous list “Pay Arnau or Adam to move the website”

We have applied for the Kit Digital grant!

I actually have lots of lovely photos to add to this post – but technical issues have frozen the media gallery….  so see the previous post “12€”, or keep up on Instagram!