Recently we gathered for an inspiring and educational workshop about SOIL! Part of one of the solidarity projects of 2021, focusing on sustainability, eco living and community.
“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on earth”
— Andres Arnalds
Many of us have been regrowing spring onions or lettuce in the kitchen, (trying to) grow avocados from the stone or enthusiastically planting seeds and buying plants and then feeling disheartened when they wilt and die, but this failure and trying and testing is a completely necessary and natural part of this learning process. This has been a beautiful trend which picked up during the periods of confinement, the question is how do we keep this going?
Successfully growing something from a seed is a simple, humbling process which brings us back to the earth, reminding us of our innate connection to our environment. Getting our hands dirty and watching the plants grow day by day can be a calming and healing process which brings a layer of mindfulness to our days, checking the leaves, the weather, and feeling awe as we watch the process of new life.
We began by getting our hands into some soil samples; comparing, feeling, smelling the soil and identifying what the soil consists of.
“Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters”
–George Monbiot.
Turns out it is complex and very much alive, made up of organic matter, microorganisms, air and water (ideally). Anna and her assistant/daughter, Kira, demonstrated the effects of rain over poor quality soil and good quality soil, which got us all thinking about where our food is coming from and how can we regenerate and replenish soil or land that has been depleted by years of monoculture farming?
Caring for the soil rather than just the plants is fundamental in the sustainability of our environment. It seems that no matter how we look at the topic of the climate crisis and ecological collapse, it always comes back to the soil, as Anna mentioned this quote in the workshop)
“Despite all our achievements we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains”
— Farm equipment association of Minnesota and South Dakota
Lou, founder of Boodaville has a rant about Brexit then writes about real issues like effective microorganisms, Jadam, windowsill gardening and urban permaculture.
I was wondering what to write today, and had BBC 6Music on while I took some photos of our little gardens here in the flat in Barcelona.
And now I have to start with a rant after hearing the pro-Brexit narrative “Britain is way ahead of Europe with vaccines” so some of you might get to go to Cyprus on 17th May. I am so sick of the bias news everywhere.. we know Brexit isn’t that great, we know the EU messed up sourcing vaccines, stop this constant media influence to try and make things fit the story the government want you to believe in.
The reality in Spain, for which I am truly grateful, is that we have been living a fairly normal life. We’re restricted to our own districts except for work; but with schools, most shops, circuses, museums open since June (except for a few weeks in November where they closed everything except schools). It is true that we may not be allowed to travel for Easter, and like everyone, we desperately miss easy to access concerts (here you can go with limited capacity and advance booking) and festivals, and mountains.
But the UK have totally messed up and it is desperately difficult for people to be locked down so severely for so long. The craziest thing to have happened since the war probably, and massively worthy of sensible analysis and news reports.
Anyway that’s all politics. People are amazing, resilient and resourceful, we will find our way and keep looking after each other.
I’ll end on a joke: On the way home from our weekend of planting and grafting at Boodaville I commented that one great thing about the restrictions is that there hasn’t been any traffic at all for 6 months, and Fraser said “There you are then, more positives from Coronavirus than there are from Brexit”
Now I’ve spent nearly 300 words on COVID and Brexit, I should, by my own guidelines, spend 600 talking about Ecosocial Design and addressing issues related to climate breakdown and ecological collapse which, although more long-term, are undisputedly more important.
Jadam
I am finally getting very very close to the end of the Regenerative Agriculture course from Planeses. The official end date was 6th January!!
While I have never been that excited about compost (I love the ideas from the Wheaton/ Klassen-Koop book that say “bury food” which is what we do at Boodaville!!), I am excited about what feeding your food forest can do. Natural fertilizers and effective microorganisms are an amazing input to boost the ecosystems you are regenerating. You do need a lot of barrels, and we still haven’t found out where to get “molasses” or “suero de leche” near Boodaville, but I think for the future of productive agriculture in the Vall Rovira, and based on the experience form Marc at Planeses, this could be a great project for 2021. In this short video I make some fairly unfounded conclusions about our observations in the food forest!
The system I was learning about is Jadam, I love the idea that you should mix into the fertilizer organic matter from the same plant that you are trying to grow. It makes sense thinking about natural systems! Preparing mixes of effective micro-organisms will be an amazing practical project for Sanilles on our “Regenerative Cultures” training in June!! A deadline to get the materials together, a budget, and a chance to actually learn this — by DOING!
Gardening in barcelona
I have finally made a pigeon proof garden with herbs and lettuces. The second windowsill is cherry tomatoes and strawberries, plus baby pigeons – can you see them in the picture? And we have rebranded the “shitty patio” and are now calling it the “shady garden”. Here I plant anything that will, or might, grow without any direct sunlight. (Basically anything that grows in the UK jaja) but very little food. The straw bale mushroom farm project didn’t get realised… this year.
The top flat on the new building next door has a HUGE terrace. I was thinking about lemons, and thought maybe we could offer the neighbours a lemon tree for the terrace in return for sharing the harvest.
This motivation to produce anything we can right here, comes very much from watching Kiss the Ground, and wanting to take any steps possible towards a diet that REGENERATES, imagine if we can improve ecosystems by eating!!
Has anyone got a lemon tree that needs a new home?
this weeks crazy ideas and new stuff
The best part about this feature is that I look back at previous posts and build and reflect on them. I changed my weekly organisation so Mondays is house and personal (mobile off!); Tuesdays is project management and accounting (Now until 8:30 pm thanks to our new babysitter and my Tuesday re-location to a coworking space!!!!); Wednesdays is Boodaville site and Rovira Regenerativa; Thursdays is Website and Poble Sec projects; Fridays I write and learn, and work on education projects. Perfect. Not too much is it?
Moving on from last week: We have potential volunteers (but you can still apply until tomorrow!), we haven’t moved forward with social media strategy, although have a new collaborator who wants to make documentary style videos for us! He may crush my budding youtuber career. (How sad for everyone)
I got all excited about offering a workshop on water at my kid’s school, Abel continues to be very excited by Biochar and we have a free workshop in Poble Sec on 21st March. I’m developing the office in Poble Sec idea, we could go all in and find premises that would be accommodation for 2 Barcelona based CES volunteers and a classroom and an office! Dream BIG!!
Then I realised that the process of identifying the needs for Boodaville, and Rovira Regenerativa gives very clear roles that need to be filled, so these dream volunteers would have plenty of work in return for getting their BCN living expenses paid. Let’s bring this down to concrete requests – do you know any premises for reasonable rent in Poble Sec? Do you know any hostal owners that are looking to diversify income streams? Also, we need an accountant (again).
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.
