brexit

Feeling like Spring (On Fridays I write)

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).

Maybe the volunteers can run the podcast!

See you next week!

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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In Barcelona (On Friday’s I write)

A difficult, cold, week in Barcelona with a story about my weird, yet ultimately successful experience finally getting my post-Brexit residency card.

This week was a return to the rhythm of getting a 7 year old dressed, full of breakfast and at the school gate at 9am. Add to that the temperatures of around 4º and the fact that we only heat a couple of rooms in our house. This was a difficult week. We will know things are getting easier and warmer when the olive oil in the kitchen becomes fully liquid again. Walks in the park and yoga, are helping me find my way back to organised and productive days. It turns out that running an association is just a constant never ending cycle of administrative tasks, and increasingly I am now managing other people – which like any work with people is complex, sometimes flowing beautifully and other times incredibly draining. I must find some balance – teaching, or having fun, or actually producing somthing. The new website is the only thing I’m producing right now and it’s going rather slowly.

Every day police violence

I did some important Brexit related admin this week in Barcelona, and finally went to pick up my Spanish ID card. The process, one which I will never have to repeat, was an incredible experience of the reality of immigration issues and my privilege as a UK passport holder. To get this legal identity card from other places in the world the queue is three hours, standing in various different queues while doubting if you are in the right one. The UK people go into a separate office with few people and wait on chairs. I know this because I went in the wrong queue back in October.

Yesterday I witnessed even more of the frustrations and weirdness surrounding this process. To pick up the card once it has been made you have to go WITH AN APPOINTMENT to the Barcelona “Policia Nacional” office. The website said “no appointments available” every single time I logged in. The rules said that I must pick up my card within 40 days, but I was also in a situation where I could’t get an appointment.

So I went to the office. An aggressive young officer outside told me that yes I had to queue up in order to ask him a question. When another officer barked at us to stand closer to the wall in the queue I decided my strategy was to obey immediately showing them that they had total power over me and barking was a brilliant idea.

15 mins later when I got to the front of the queue I had smartened myself up a bit (took off my silly pink hat and fingerless gloves i’ve had since I was a teenager), I had prepared what I was going to say, and was ready to be absolutely 100% calm and polite, and not expect anything. This actually worked. After asking what to do to get the card I somehow found myself moved to the side of the queue with one other woman. Here I was, standing in front of 20 posters saying “You must have an appointment” about to get in without an appointment. Magic.

From this spot I watched the officers say no to everyone else without an appointment, except one other woman. We were the lucky three.

Anyone who expressed their frustration at the insanity of the system (these people have spent hours and hours logging in to the system at different times of day hoping it says something other than “no appointments available”) received an incredibly aggressive response from the police. I saw a man with his child yelled at in the face “get out of here”, then taken by the arm and told to “go”. I then saw two males, one after the other, yelled at and pushed hard in the back. These people were asking for the same information I was, just letting their stress and frustration show.

As witness to this, and one of the lucky ones, I felt incredibly weird and uncomfortable. Here they were yelling “noone gets in without an appointment” and here we were three people for who that wasn’t true. Was this the moment to try and take some sort of stand and call out the violence and hypocrisy? No. For me it was the moment to breathe, maintain a silent calm and wait patiently, committing the story to memory to be able to share it as a learning experience for others; the absolute truth in the benefits of inner calm, and the uselessness of stress. As well as the horror of the way society works for people who are frustrated and desperate.

We were given no indication of how long our chosen group of three (all female) would wait for our non-appointment, but we all knew that standing here in the sun, with the end of this process in our grasp today was a whole lot better than more frustration and doubt trying the website, or phone calls that are never answered. The woman before me had been waiting 90 minutes. I was there a mere 20!

When we got inside one of the officers was there, kind of joking with us saying “I don’t get paid enough for this” and “Every single day we have to do this”. She then listened to one man who actually got in the door and asked reasonably polite question before telling him “noone gets in without a previous appointment”, then shouted “outside” to another woman who tried the same move to get inside.

After a few more minutes I got in to the office. There were two people working, and more than two empty desks. Really?

I was out in two more minutes with my permanent ID card, complete with fingerprint data, photo and a little window with a picture of me. I hadn’t really expected to get all the way to this point today, and as she put my scraggy green paper on a pile of documents to be disposed of I looked at there with an emotional moment of nostalgia. That folded, torn, sellotaped piece of paper had been with me for 14 years since 2006 when I moved to Barcelona. I lost it for over a year in 2010 before finding it folded in the special lift pass pocket of my old ski jacket. I had a sudden urge to take a selfie with it! but it was too late, and I can’t imagine how the police would react to photos in the office, there was absolutely nothing going on with me except nervous best behaviour. Just the way they wanted everyone.

This weeks crazy ideas and new stuff

That was a long story about just two hours of this week. So I’ll share a few more things that are going on. Firstly I have a dream to start a podcast. I have a vague idea of format, but not sure about the technical side. Secondly I’m considering offering a regular zoom session, I have three ideas for this: One hour to just be available for questions, one hour to do connection activities, based on Joanna Macy the work that reconnects and Jon Young Exploring Natural Mystery. And one hour which is content based, sharing ideas and principles and examples of ecosocial and regenerative design. That’s 3 hours. Should I do that, or should I go and spend time online networking? Or maybe I could try and get a job teaching ecosoical design, that way someone else could do all the coordinating?

Also this week I was extremely happy to take up a position as a Director for “Greenhearted” the new NGO being created by the wonderful Kate Curtis in South Africa.

And this morning I loved this little piece of direct action by the neighbours who are sick of dog poo everywhere.

I try to write every Friday – read more here