Tag: design

Living the Questions – Youth Worker Training

Post author By Lou
Post date July 28, 2021
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Living the Questions – Youth Worker Training

In June 2021 Boodaville organized an Erasmus+ Youth Worker Training at Sanillés, in the Spanish Pyrenees. The "Living the Questions" training was about permaculture and "Designing Regenerative Cultures" including practical work and all sorts of non-formal education techniques.

Boodaville organised this Youth Worker Training at the beautiful Sanilles Eco- Resort in the Spanish Pyrenees the 20th – 30th June 2021. With participation from over 16 different countries Anna Louise from Boodaville and Aline from La Casa Integral facilitated sessions on Permaculture and Regenerative Cultures (drawing heavily on the texts “Designing Regenerative Cultures” by Daniel Wahl and “People and Permaculture” by Looby McNamara). Many thanks to everyone involved!! It was a beautiful week, and thanks to @morja_zala and Aline among others for the wonderful photos!

A summary from our participants…

“1 + 1 is more than two isn’t it? When we arrived at Sanilles 5 days ago as individuals we had not yet formed the connections that we now have. Through sharing circles, games, singing, eating together, social time and participating in diverse non-formal learning methods, we have steadily built our connections and become more aware of how we may collectively respond to the big questions of our time. In class we have explored permaculture principles and design techniques, and in parallel learnt how to apply these regenerative cultures in the foreseeable future by adapting, collaborating and using our ability to respond. Through both our new bonds and what we’ve learned about ecology, regenerative agriculture, education and economy for example, we have come to an awareness of the need for an attitude of gratitude for the earth and each other. It is a true gift to be united in such diversity, and to be able to put our stereotypes on the table in honesty and learn about the world from multiple perspectives. So by thinking critically, creatively and courageously we can use the knowledge and experiences we have gained to be the change we want to see in the world and inspire others. We face a future when nothing is predictable. Do you breathe air? Then you should care. Our regenerative future is emerging… what role will you play? Let’s step forward together in active hope, and keep going no matter what!”

Our classroom was full of resources about ecological design, systems thinking, regenerating economy, education and agriculture and how to care for ourselves and work joyfully with others.

But the best place for learning was outside in the stunning natural surroundings (the difference in temperature inside the building and outside in the sun was huge!!)

Wahi groups – each day a group participated in the daily tasks of fetching natural spring water, kitchen work and keeping the site tidy

Free time

Practical work – JADAM microorganism mix, preparing for on contour tree planting with organic matter and biochar. (Full details of design and methods used in a separate post coming soon!)

Preparing for on contour planting Boodaville YWT

Intercultural evenings – a chance to share our stories and traditions

International food and drink Boodaville YWT

Sant Joan Catalan celebration Boodaville YWT

Down by the river connection to nature and deep ecology inspired by Joanna Macy

Reflecting on our learning journey, via the medium of drama, art and crazy quiz shows

Dramatic representation of Days 1-4 Boodaville YWT

Regenerative poster making, no pen and paper required Boodaville YWT

Guest speaker – extra session with a local bamboo expert

Extra session with Fred on Bamboo building Boodaville YWT

Presentations of regenerative Economy, Education and Self-Care by the participants.

Regenerative Economy - based on Caseres village!! Boodaville YWT

Regenerative economy presentation Boodaville YWT

Regenerative Education presentation Boodaville YWT

Celebration – evening music, laughter and appreciation cards on the last night

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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Tags boodaville, course, design, education, erasmusplus, European Youth, la casa integral, living the questions, nature, permaculture, permacultureeducation, regenerative cultures, sanilles

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Fermenting

Jessica posts about life at Boodaville and what makes her heart sing, including fermenting; kombucha, sourdough and lactobacteria.

Let’s talk about things that make my heart sing at Boodaville. For example fermenting. I love fermenting stuff.

A volunteer from Cyprus, Olivia, came in May this year to Boodaville and introduced us to sourdough. She taught us how to create our own “sourdough baby” as we call it (during the season our baby literally grew up and we called it “masa madre”) and make the most delicious pita bread. Olivia moved on to pursue her sourdough career and we bake sourdough pita’s regularly. Sourdough is incredibly simple and tasty. Every day we feed our masa madre and “harvest” some already fermented sourdough to kick start today’s bread. If we want to pause it for a few days we put our sourdough baby in the fridge, if we want to pause it for a few weeks we put her in the freezer. As simple as that.

Kombucha is fermented tea, also introduced by Olivia. We have one big jar of kombucha and since that one is going really well and tastes great we split it up in several smaller jars and have experiments. All volunteers on site have at least one little jar to do weird experiments with. At the moment we have kombucha in an airtight container, apple-kombucha and tea-free kombucha. We taste and compare. Fail and try again. It’s fun. It’s also interesting to see how kombucha responds to outdoor temperatures. In summertime it fermented super fast. Winter has arrived and the kombucha is very very slooooowww…

Least favourite under the Boodavillians but the most fascinating to me are the lactobacteria. Lactobacteria are airborne, present everywhere and all they need is a nice home (which I created in a jar with starchy water and no lid) and it grows in a beautiful sour smelling substance. It is very effective to speed up the composting process, for example if our -usually odourless- compost toilet goes smelly. It produces a lot of gas during that process and when we once added lactobacteria to closed buckets of humanure permaculture teacher, Marc, almost freaked out. The pressure in the buckets could build up and the lid would explode off-sending our poo flying. That’s called learning from experience, isn’t it?

During a permaculture conference I learned how to multiply microorganisms for the compost toilet so that one is definitely on my to do list. And I’m still looking for a neighbour with some goats so I can start making cheese… hmmm… I love fermenting stuff.

Antonia

I'm taking this year before university to try things out. Still searching and on my way to learning more and more about myself and the world around me. Sending out lots of love!

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Tags boodaville, design, ecoliving, education, erasmus plus, EU Solidarity Corps, European Youth, kombucha, living permaculture, permaculture, permaculture education, pita, project, regenerative farming

homepage Rovira Regenerativa

Swale digging, tree planting and grafting pistachios

Post author By Lou
Post date February 26, 2021
2 Comments on Swale digging, tree planting and grafting pistachios

Swale digging, tree planting and grafting pistachios

Last weekend we worked on the abandoned terrace project, digging a swale, planting trees and grafting pistachio branches onto "pistachia lentiscus".

I love the work we did last weekend.. implementing permaculture design with wonderful knowledgeable people and finishing all the tasks we planned.

Olive branches

The first job was sawing off the broken branches of the olive trees – many trees were damaged by a 60cm snowfall back in January. These branches were then used to make a fence along the far edge of the terrace we are working on. A barrier to keep the wild boar in the forest and not snuffling around our newly planted trees.

swale

We dug a swale along the lower half of the terrace which will fill with water run-off from the road. In the past we’ve had problems with these swales getting immediately full of mud and silt coming down with the water, so we dug a silt basin at the entrance to the swale. This silt basin will need to be emptied (dug out) fairly often – after almost every storm! But it means that water will get all the way to the end of the swale, and hopefully the swale itself won’t need to be dug out for a while.

The design for the whole terrace is two long swales reaching all the way across this terrace, with about 25-30 fruit trees in total.

This weekend we dug the first 5 metres of the swale and planted four fruit trees – 2 apple and 2 apricot.

fig trees

We will take “suckers” from the fig trees and plant them on this terrace as another useful, and under appreciated fruit tree that grows abundantly in this area. We were going to dig them up and stick them in the ground, but on the advice of Nat from Flores de Vida, we have left them in water, with some of the bark stripped away, to grow some roots for a while. Some of the suckers we took were cut, and some were dug out with a small amount of root still attached. We will leave them, making sure they don’t get dry, for a month or so, then replant them near the apple and apricot trees.

Grafting

Nick from Cova Fullola found 3 male and 3 female branches from Pistachio trees and we have taken around 20 female buds and 20 male buds and tied them to shady spots on branches of “pistachia lentiscus” trees that grow naturally and abundantly here.

On the larger tree we pruned around the branches we grafted, but left most of the tree intact to provide shade. On the smaller tree, which had shade from a nearby olive, we took almost all the branches except the two that we were grafting. In each tree one branch is grafted with male buds, and one with female buds.

Lou

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Tags agriculture, design, grafting, matarranya, mediterranean, permaculture, regeneration, regenerative agriculture, spain, swale, water

Rovira Regenerativa

Abandoned Terrace Project (On Friday’s I write)

Post author By Lou
Post date February 5, 2021
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Abandoned Terrace Project (On Friday’s I write)

As part of the Rovira Regenerativa project we are experimenting with ways to design productive terraces using regenerative agriculture techniques, with no irrigation in a semi-arid mediterranean climate. This post explains the first steps recuperating an abandoned olive terrace.

This morning I woke up wondering how I can inspire our Rovira Regenerativa team, (and anyone else who is interested!) to engage deeply with the work we are going to do on the 20th February in the Vall Rovira. Last week I wrote that the “Why?” is absolutely key to learning and motivated work, and I realised yesterday that I want to share the best story I can about why we doing the following work on an abandoned terrace near Boodaville in two weeks time:

Pruning the olive tree
planting support species and fruit trees (apples, pomegranates and figs)
making Gin infused with rosemary
Grafting pistachio on to the lentiscus tree

(You can see the terrace with the olive and lentiscus tree in the photo)

ECOSYSTEM HEALTH

These are the exact words we are using to define one objective of our project. We discussed yesterday, that in order to frame Ecosocial projects like this to fit with our current capitalist mindset and therefore secure funding, we can also label Ecosystem Health as a “return” on any investment in the project. So the overall “Why?” of the project is Ecosystem Health.

how does this implementation on the abandoned terrace lead to a healthy ecosystem?

As Mia, one of our team members rightly pointed out, the very best thing for the natural ecosystem would be to leave this terrace alone. To do nothing and let nature have space to regenerate. Complete “rewilding”.

But we live on this planet with nearly 9 billion human beings and people need to eat. Our current agriculture practices are degrading ecosystems on a massive scale, they are hugely wasteful and involve transporting goods large distances.

We seem very far away from it here in the Vall Rovira, but in the small shop in Caseres I have found apples from New Zealand for sale. This little village relies on MercaZaragoza, a huge international hub, for provisions for the shop.

With the design we are implementing here we are working with nature, to maintain and even regenerate the soil, and to improve water retention right here on the terrace in the photo. At the same time we are countering some of the damage done by most farming.

inspiration

By sharing the space and the project, by involving the local community, we encourage a change in consumption habits, offer hope, and ignite the imagination so people can replicate and develop these ideas.

Action

The terrace in the photo has been abandoned for over twenty years. Here is the thinking behind our planned work :

We will work with nature and use the healthy elements already present in the ecosystem – soil filled with roots, organic matter and life which is in a decompacted state compared to machine farmed terraces.
We will add support species to fix nitrogen, attract beneficial insects, increase biodiversity, and grow deep roots
Pruning the olive : In order to produce a yield we need accessible healthy branches only.
Grafting lentiscus : This tree could have a value as lentiscus (apparently it’s very expensive and used for funerals in the Netherlands) but a pistachio harvest would be appreciated by locals. (Apparently this grafting is possible but none of us have ever seen it working so we are going to try)
Support species and fruit trees : In between the life that already exists on the terrace we are going to add more nitrogen fixers and climate appropriate fruit trees to harvest.
Making Gin with rosemary : Juniper and Rosemary are abundant on this terrace and we are following up some ideas and suggestions with action to see how the abundance nature offers us in the Vall Rovira can be used to make products with a high value.

balance

A large part of what we are doing is Regenerative Agriculture, rather than complete rewilding.

The beauty of the design is that even the agricultural land will be improving the health of the valley ecosystem while at the same time providing food for humans and wildlife, and opportunities for producing products with a high value.

We recognise, however, that at the valley scale the design has to be a balance between completely natural spaces and agricultural land we we are continuing to explore what proportion of the abandoned terraces we will bring back to agriculture. This first experiment is a pilot to see how we can make the most of the natural succession that has already occurred and make a quick transition to food production.

Please feel free to add comments and suggestions below!

Lou

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Tags agriculture, design, natural farming, permaculture, polyculture, water

permaculture Rovira Regenerativa

The greywater system at our permaculture project

Post author By Lou
Post date January 27, 2021
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The greywater system at our permaculture project

In 2017 we implemented a very simple greywater system from the kitchen sink to a mulch basin. Looking at the photos now I can't believe we didn't do more for the poor quality soil!

Greywater mulch basin – We dug and mulched a 2m diameter mulch basin (to be pronounced for ever more in the french way (ˈbeɪsən ) 😉 ) A large fig tree will be planted in September because it is a species that especially enjoys greywater (from the kitchen sink – cooking and some washing up water), provides food, suitable for the climate, and offers shade. The water runs directly onto the straw mulch which works as a filter for the soap and food particles so they don’t enter the soil – the method is described in detail by Art Ludwig.

Lou

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Tags design, greywater, water, water management

permaculture

2018 Rocket Stove

Building a rocket stove for Boodaville in 2018

25th January 2019

Great video showing the rocket stove in detail

The rocket stove was built in July 2018. Experienced rocket stove builder Jordi taught us how to create an efficient heater out of very simple and locally sourced materials. All we used was an old metal drum, metal L shaped pipe, bricks, tiles, soil, sand and straw.

The rocket stove has 2 major parts. The fire is fueled in the L-shape, the hot air goes up and then it’s sucked down on the sides of the L-shape and into the second part of the rocket stove. The horizontal part of the chimney doubles as a heated bench ( permaculture thinking; stacking functions!). Because the whole structure consists of a lot of mass, once it’s hot, it will stay warm for a long time slowly releasing the heat.

That’s as far as the theory goes. Reality kicked in when we lit the rocket stove for the first time… After building the stove in July, we first lit it in October. It was about 30°C outside so it was easy to collect some dry branches and off we went. Result; smoke coming out everywhere. The whole structure had developed small cracks as the organic “cement” made out of sand, soil and straw had dried up and started cracking. Now the stove was venting inside the house. It was horrible. So time to get a bucket with water and some clay and a brush to patch up all the cracks and holes. This gave the rough looking structure a smoother look. The next time we lit it the smoke wasn’t as bad and we could fix the cracks as the fire was going. That was an easy fix.

Time passed by and when hurricane Leslie came we knew for sure autumn had arrived. So I decided to light the rocketstove to warm us up and dry our clothes. Lighting it is not an easy job since the L-shape is only 22 cm in diameter so I had to use very small branches to make sure enough oxygen was available for a good combustion. I also noticed that the opening of the L-shape was too low to the ground to sit comfortably in front of it. I almost have to lay on the ground (this reminds me of roman style eating where rich people laid down while eating…) to feed the small branches into the opening. Note to self; if I happen to build another rocket stove, it needs to have an opening on eye level. But I soon learned that wasn’t the only problem…

Some days the smoke comes back into the house, even accompanied with flames. The rocket is supposed to rocket upwards, not straight into the house! Soon I realised this was caused by two problems. The first problem is the existing chimney built on the roof of the house. A short (2 meter) chimney sitting on top of a flat roof deep in a valley doesn’t catch much wind. There is some draft around the chimney needed to create an underpressure inside the chimney to direct the smoke in the right direction. So one day we had someone on the roof to wave a towel around next to the chimney to create some airflow. This was surprisingly effective! This poor person standing in the roof had to stay there doing the “wellness centre towel wave” until the hot air made it through the horizontal part of the chimney into the vertical part, where the rising hot air would find it’s way out. Not to self; the shorter the vertical part inside the house, the sooner the stove has the rules of physics working with it. If the inside tubing was shorter than the approximately 7 meters of vertical chimney we have so the whole system would heat up faster.

So a lack of breeze in combination with a short chimney on a flat roof down in a valley is not ideal. But the opposite, strong winds, caused problems too…

One very windy day I tried to light the rocket stove but the wind created so much draft inside the system that the starting fire would go out immediately. It took me a lot of effort to get enough heat in there (between wind gusts) to get the rocket stove going. But as soon as I was going it went off… like a rocket. The roaring sound was immense and perfectly synchronised with the wind gusts outside. But sometimes the wind would change and instead of creating an underpressure in the chimney, it would blow down in the chimney full force and I had the flames with the force of the rocket INSIDE the house. Luckily this nasty habit stopped as soon as the whole heating system was hot. But until then, note to self; make sure to have a good fitting door to close quickly if needed. Luckily, the curved removable door we have proved to be very effective.

A few weeks later :

Today, after all the troubleshooting I’m sitting on a heated bench huddled under a warm blanket. Since we light it every day it is very easy to start. I assume that is because it’s not fully cooled down from the previous fire. It only consumes small branches and produces more heat than I could ever imagine coming out of such a small amount of fuel. And the structure stays hot all night long. As soon as I get a house that needs a stove, it definitely is going to be a rocket stove. Now I understand the rocket stove I hardly have trouble with it. The only downside is that it does require tending to produce a great amount of heat… I love fire and making fire and fuel efficiency and environmental benefits make me feel good too.

Lou

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Tags Bioconstruction, boodaville, design, European Youth, Heating, living permaculture, permaculture, permaculture education, Rocket, Rocket Stove, Stove, Woodburning