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2019 ESC Volunteer Project

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2019 ESC Volunteer Project

Reflections and learnings from our 2019 volunteers - including a video they produced soon after arriving.
We are here!

Posted on May 10, 2019

Dear readers of this Boodaville blog,

Together with spring the Boodaville season has started in April. But our adventure as ESC volunteers at Boodaville has just begun. Adam, Maria, Santiago and me, Inge, have been selected as this years long-term volunteers with Claudia and Gala as our much needed mentors. We are all super excited and honoured to become a part of this beautiful place and meet all the amazing people connected to it. For the coming seven months we will live at Boodaville and in Caseres. We will be working on the site, be active on social media and hope to become part of, and make new, networks with other permaculture projects.

For me personally these first two weeks as a Boodaville volunteer have already made a huge impact on me. Meeting my fellow volunteers, Claudia, Anna, and all the others who are passionate about permaculture and Boodaville has been the best of experiences. Leaving my old life, my family and friends behind for seven months has been both exciting and hard. Jumping into an unknown situation like this project should be. I can now honestly say that having the right people around you makes taking a huge step like this so much easier. The philosophy of permaculture is not only obvious in the way Boodaville is designed but also in the way we work together as a group. We seek solutions instead of focusing on the problems. Our differences are not important, we all respect each other and focus on those things that connect us.

So please follow us if you are interested in our journey and the amazing thing we are planning this season for Boodaville. We will post content on this blog, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook. We will also be present at the coming Maranya festival. Hope to see you there!

Reflections and learnings from our 2019 volunteers - including a video they produced soon after arriving.
Reflections and learnings from our 2019 volunteers - including a video they produced soon after arriving.
Life of a Boodaville volunteer: May

Posted on Jun 17, 2019

So I here am, one month into my adventure. An adventure I share with my fellow volunteers, our mentor and our growing Boodaville family. A seven months journey into permaculture. A month does not seem much. Its only four weeks. Thirty one days of working in the morning, eating and relaxing in the afternoon and working some more in the cooling evening. All this while enjoying nature 24/7. The month May felt like a lifetime to me, but in the best way.

I learned that permaculture is based upon three principles: care for the Earth, fair share and caring for people (and animals!). When applying for this project I imagined most of my learning would be in caring for the Earth. And I have learned a lot, I learned how to use zais systems to regenerate the earth and get rid of your compost, how worms are not disgusting but beautiful hard working creatures. I learned that nature as a design inspiration leads to impressive gardens like our own Boodaville food forest. Also when you cut grass it gives the nutrients a chance to return to the Earth. A month ago cutting grass seemed to me a waste of time but I now consider it to be my new hobby.

But the thing I truly learned a lot about is caring for others (both people and animals). The sharing circles though often emotionally draining have made me realize many things about myself and others. And help me accept some of those. Living in a group, a community, a wolf pack, has both been amazing but also challenging. The key to being a successful group is not to never have friction but how you handle it. Storms may be gathering, rain may fall, it’s good for growing.

Last week I was asked if I have a motto. I found out that I do. “Perfection does not exist.” But striving for perfection is a noble cause. To me, permaculture seems a great way to at least try.

Thank you Boodaville for welcoming me so full of kindness!

Posted on Oct 23, 2019

“Everything that is really, really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom” – Albert Einstein

My first impression about Boodaville as a volunteer: Arrive – Breath – Stop your thoughts – Start working from inner silence. The first half of the day I spent with daily tasks of the very basic life in boodaville with feeding the worm compost, chickens, making wood chips for the food forest, cooking, having inspiring conversations with other volunteers,… The second half of the day I had the freedom to work on my inner processes. Everyone does this in a different way. I chose reading and meditating. Others use their time to learn Spanish or connecting with the land by riding a bike. So there is a lot of space of self-development, which creates amazing conversations and projects from everyone! On the weekend we had a great tree planting project going on. I learned about permaculture-principles and step by step we tried to bring the soil alive again, from really harsh conditions, the cultural way of farming have left for us.

In general I feel Boodaville is a place you can learn to build a new form of living together as society and learn to come back to your basic needs, slowing down from stressful life and reconnect with the environment by working with the land.

I really appreciate the people I met and the awareness of the freedom to choose every second from now on! People I met and the awareness of the freedom to choose every second from new on! 

Sense of an ending, Boodaville 2019 (by Inge)

Posted on Jan 24, 2020

From the beginning of May until the end of November I was one of the lucky few who had the opportunity to work and live in Boodaville as part of my ESC project. Now my beautiful, intense, exhilarating, often frustrating and completely inspirational time in Boodaville has ended. Before I came to Boodaville I dreamed to one day be able to lead a sustainable, self-sufficient life. I dreamed about finding my place in this world. Finding people I can connect with on deep levels. Learning all the practical things I felt I did not learn in school. And hoped to have fun while doing all of this.

Boodaville made it possible for all the things I had dreamed about for so many years to become reality. The last seven months I learned to live without running water and electricity. I learned to take care of our gardens. How the plants actually look that provide us with food. I learned not to be disgusted by compost toilets. To see my human waste not as filthy, but as part of me and a vital fertilizing part of our ecosystems. Reality however brings with it negative things that did not appear in my dreams. There can be no good without the bad. And if you do not let the bad happen a lot of good things will also not happen. I had to accept sides of me I could ignore in my old life. I had to face frustration and pain. Not only my own but those of everyone in my community. And where there is a group of people, especially a group like ours with strong personalities, each from different backgrounds, different cultures, well conflicts will just arrive. You cannot help it. And maybe we should not want to. Because conflicts do not need to be bad, do not need to create pain, create division. They are a sign that people care. And when well handled they made us stronger. And while learning all of this, I had the best time of my live.

So I guess all that is left for me to say is thank you. The Boodaville site is a beautiful mixture and monument of all volunteers that passed through it. Boodaville as a place is simply amazing, and Anna deserves all our praise and gratitude for bringing it into existence. Matarranya and Terra Alta are both stunningly beautiful regions inhabited by the most generous and friendly people. Who welcomed me and the rest of our crew with love, food and a lot unasked but needed advice. I need to thank my fellow volunteers. The ones that were there with me from beginning until the end. And the ones that spent time with us. I am going to need years to truly realize how much you taught me. These months would not have been as amazing if you had been different people. So really thanks to everyone I met. Who proved to me that there are a lot of people that care. Care about our planet, about nature, about all animals and other living thing.

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Fermenting

Fermenting Kombucha

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.

Fermenting Kombucha

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We got some serious work done at our Permaculture site this weekend!

Chiseling the wall down

We got some serious work done at our Permaculture site this weekend!

This weekend we got some serious work done - see our new dry stone wall and drain, the intervention in the food forest, the results of the olive harvest and the work we have to do to fix our green roof.

This weekend we were working with Nick Park from Cova Fullola to get a dry stone wall built between the two houses. Lou concentrated efforts on finishing the inside wall off the old house with lime mortar between the stones, working with mulch in the food forest, harvesting and sorting the olives and digging up the green roof so the builder can get in and fix it next week. The amazing Jessica was managing site to make sure we had energy, water and a rocket stove warm house to get us all through the weekend. Yes, these were 4 extremely productive days!

See what we did in the gallery!

 

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2019 Regenerative Agroforestry at Mas Les Vinyes

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2019 Regenerative Agroforestry at Mas Les Vinyes

Notes and summary of ideas from the first weekend of the Regenerative Agroforestry course at Mas les Vinyes

Regenerative Agroforestery at Mas les Vinyes

Posted on Oct 19, 2019

I finally had the chance to visit the amazing Mas les Vinyes in September. The course on Regenerative Agroforestry is three weekends in total, and I’m writing to share my impressions and some of what I learnt at the first one. The weekend was absolutely brilliant – just to see the project was incredible, and we also had Carles and Sergi facilitating excellent sessions; theory, visiting the examples on site, and a practical, plus we stayed overnight and ate amazing food with the community there.

Even though the climate and land use is very different to Boodaville – it is greener and with a lot of animal grazing and grass – the sessions were really well adapted to give information to individual projects.

Boodaville has changed direction from the original permaculture eco-village plan, and as we see the world getting crazier, with people trying desperately to cling to power and money while environmental crises are not addressed, I am getting more and more interested in soil. Building soil. Fertile, nutrient filled, rich and bursting with life. Where fungus creates connections between different plants and trees growing together into a resilient ecosystem. The new direction is developing regenerative agriculture in the valley – a tough challenge in this water scarce, soil degraded area. I never thought I would be a farmer, but the impact of successful regenerative agriculture will be beautiful. And on the journey to get there, after ten years of creating, coordinating and administrating Boodaville, I now have the pleasure of learning, exploring, going out and connecting with other people and projects, and designing.

If you would like to know more about our new direction (including permaculture education, regenerative farming and ecosystem restoration please email me Lou : thegurney@gmail.com and I will send you information)

There is loads of info at Mas les Vinyes on their youtube channel and a great project EDUCA PERMACULTURA

SATURDAY MORNING – WHAT IS RA?

Sergi opens with a little speech about how Syntropic Agriculture won’t work in Spain as it uses loads and loads of water. I’m really interested in Syntropy and will bear this in mind and look forward to learning  more!

What is regenerative? Productive, self-fertilising, healthy with no plagues, resilient (can withstand and recover from shocks)

What is degenerative? Production requires energy, requires nutrients, and leads to dead soil/ desertification

Jem Bendell is mentioned : DEEP ADAPTATION he wrote a paper on this as a way of coping with the collapse of our living systems and all the social craziness this has led to. The 4 R’s are Renounce, Resilience, Restoration, Reconciliation. Part of the process is to accept how bad things really are, to accept that people will be distracted by clickbait, and adverts, and continue as they have been “programmed to function” (words from the Lily Allen song “The Fear”!) Then you can find your way without these things damaging you, and engage with anyone. Ok I’m drifting off topic here…

We can adapt Regenerative Agroforestry (RA) to climate change, using Microclimates, Infiltration, the fact that forests have efficient, Slow transpiration rates – they don’t transpire all the water as soon as the sun shines like cereals (and rocket! Rocket will dry out your soil!!), Biodiversity, Low energy needs.

Characteristics of RA

  • tree layer
  • soil is a living element
  • symbiosis flora / fauna / micro fauna
  • efficient design

Types of RA

  • Food forest
  • Analogue forestry. This is where you imitate the natural forest of the region, but can use homologous varieties – so you might use a slightly more drought resistant variety of a tree, or a slightly different bush that produces fruit that humans eat, and this is agriculture, so you will be planting productive trees in the system.  In permaculture design this would be in zone 3 / 4 much less maintenance than the food forest.

This picture is an analogue forestry design at Mas les Vinyes (MLV), they have replicated the forest behind using ecological surveying, and put the productive trees at the edges of the rows where they can be easily harvested. They have planted many species, indigenous and homologous trees imitating the climax forest behind. They only water the productive trees that are not native. (This project is also being funded by a research program – they are looking at what lives and dies to see how climate change may be affecting what natives live and die now)

They say there is a certification called “Forest (Garden) Product” so for responsible consumers out there you can look that up and buy even better than organic!

(more types of RA)

  • Alley cropping – they do some of this at MLV. Some crops do better in the “alleys” between the trees than they do without trees. This is part of the culture in many places not a “new” idea.

Check out the amazing Paulonia tree – a species that has loads of useful properties in RA systems – but needs a lot of water so no good for Boodaville.

  • River Agroforestry – this is illegal in Catalunya as within a certain distance from the river you aren’t allowed to farm. If you want to use animals in the system make sure they can’t get all the way to to river banks as their behaviour will increase erosion. I see a real potential for this in the bottom of the valley at Boodaville where there is no “river” but there is underground water –  you can already see the bigger trees there making the most of the water available, it would be great to start putting some productive trees and designing a system around there.
  • Perimeter Agroforestry – where the trees follow a pattern on the design (NOT just the edges of fields around monoculture) but maybe following a swale/key line, or designing perimeters into your land to have more forest.
  • Silvopastoreo – animal agroforestry is what they do here at MLV.

Nice graph about mechanisation. Imagine mono culture cereal is 100% mechanisation – you drop down in the following order – alley cropping, 75%, perimeter about 60%, then silvopastoreo 50%, River about 40%, analogue 30% and food forest down the bottom at about 15%.

A tour of MLV

1st stop is the alley cropping, where we see rows of fruit trees with support species such as Eleagnus, Consuela, Buffalo Berry, Caragana. They have a nice Goji next to a Mulberry. Olivo ruso is in the system

2nd stop some “guilds” next to the veg garden. The border, at top of terrace wall is a great mix – rosemary, eleagnus and a pink flower ASK SERGI!!. They have a climber that got out of control, be careful with fast growing climbers. passion flower, nispero,

3rd stop analogue forestry

4th stop in the woods – they had cut down all the spikey, early succession bushes (the ones we get at Boodaville!) to leave space for sheep food and sheep?

Full list of species talked about with Sergi for Boodaville / water scarce poor soils

Cytisus Coronilla

Hippopae Rhamnoides – get male and femail, has yellow spine

Alfalfa Arbolia

Paulowina?

Capers?

Esparago

Pulsatilla (or something that sounds similar)

Cerbuxa (pruny kind of bush, something that sounds similar to this)

Caragana (Anna took seeds from Sergi)

Tanoceto (Anna took seeds from Sergi)

Palomera (?)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON – DESIGN

Process

  • define vision
  • analysis using permanence scale from yeoman. In order of permanent down to less permanent: – climate, topology (get a proper topological survey for new project – Jesus Ruiz can do this), water, roads/access, trees (dominant, abundant, frequent, occasional, rare, non-existent that would be expected), structures, sub-divisions, soil.
  • map of the land
  • sector analysis and preliminary zone map (Fire, Air, Water, Earth for sectors)
  • study of homologous ecosystems and biotic factors
  • define objectives of the system that need to be designed – including, market, economic, social ecosystem
  • have strategies like layers to cover time while trees go (eg growing veg under trees before they get to maturity)
  • define AR system to use
  • choose what to grow

Choosing what to grow :

decide on main cultivations, secondary cultivations, morfología y necesidades, and choose your support species. Support species have the following functions : mineral accumulators, creating organic matter, attracting insects, improving soil, covering soil.

SECOND PART OF DESIGN

  • proyección de especies
  • timeline for action
  • IMPLEMENTATION!!!

We then looked at two projects from members of the group and did an amazing application of all of the above, in about one hour we took two groups through the process and actually had half the design on the board! The best design session I’ve ever done.

Practical stuff that came up : If you are planting anything that competes for water put it more than 1.5m from tree. In general don’t plant permanent stuff closer than 50cm. Avellanas (hazelnuts) need 1000mm a year rainfall. oh. so maybe they won’t grow at Boodaville then.

SUNDAY – MICROBIOLOGY OF SOIL

Living soil has minerals, microorganisms and organic matter.

Aerobic microbiology makes humus. Anaerobic microbiology is what takes the minerals from the Roca Madre. Tractors mix these two, and that is BAD.

Structure : you need clay particles to hold soil together and the elements with a negative charge stick to clay (Ma, Mg, Z) The elements with a positive charge stick to the Roca Madre (mother rock. i’m sure it has a better name in English).

Fertility – Think about now, in the near future and in the long term. (This is where we have been going WRONG)

Fertility now : minerals are in the soil and water transplants them to plants once they are available.

Fertility for the next ten years : The soils needs organic matter. one way to get this is to let animals graze and eat 50% of the top of the plant. This doesn’t kill the plant (good) but also does mean the plant is damaged enough to lose 25% of its roots (good). The roots then become organic matter in the soil. So in RA we want to lose 50% of the plants at the top.

Plants auto regulate themselves, so if they lose leaves, then they will lose some roots. And if they lose roots, they will then lose leaves.

Ants take sugar (seeds, energy) down into the ground where they make fungus. Ants eat fungus. They even make different fungus in different places so they are resilient, and if some doesn’t grow, then the other ones will. Ants know more about different types of fungus than humans.

There are three pages of notes left!

Until I get another chance that is all for now

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