Urban eco-living, and updates on team 2023 (On Fridays I write)

The baby is healthy today!! (after an intense few days of high fevers and a brief trip to the hospital last weekend). The hospital trip was for out of hours care rather than what I would classify as “seriously scary” (I’ve never had to deal with seriously scary, thank goodness). But it was plenty traumatic enough.

Now we can focus on the fact that she really really needs to learn how to sleep longer. I’ve been waking up every two hours for a while now, and am surprised I’m functioning at all. As part of the plan to fix this I spent a day building a fence with pieces of a cot, so she can’t fall out of the double bed we sleep in. She has an amazing ability to sleep perpendicular to the normal sleeping position, and she needs a clear space.. if she rolls over and crashes into someone, or a pillow, she wakes up. This was a DIY revelation for me. You may find this hard to believe, and it gives you a little insight into what my role at Boodaville has always been, but I have never used a functioning jigsaw before this week! I borrowed it from our neighbour – who it turns out is doing a PHD on design that works on our planet (it may have a better title than that) and is designing a huge farm project near Madrid – and it was so easy to cut the pieces to size!! 

Eco-living in the city

This week I picked up “recycled” vegetables as part of the local “Espigadores” group. It worked perfectly to have an abundance of food on the day that the Boodaville Barcelona volunteers work from the office (my house) and we combined social media and website tasks with cooking up the abundance of cauliflower (a lovely curry), aubergines and tomatoes (rich pasta sauce) and bananas (banana and oat cookies, with an egg, some cocoa powder, some agave syrup. 4 bananas, 125g of oats and a bit of everything else. about 190º for about 15 mins). The cookies were massively more successful than last years attempt and Joanna loves them! Thanks to Saul’s mum for the recipe and to the people who organise the group so we can benefit from this food which would otherwise be thrown in the rubbish. We also got pears, plums, green pepper, cucumbers. I love the idea that each Tuesday we cook and work, and all have tupperwares of yummy food for the week. 

Also this week I dipped my toe into the world of the Parent’s Association by offering to maybe help out with the school vegetable garden. All of a sudden I found myself in charge of the medicinal garden for the nursery kids, and committed to offering 6 classes with them working in the garden. So that’s what I’ll be doing after writing every Friday for the next month or so! We also got offered the chance to run the vegetable garden: free easy access water, budget for plants and compost, soil that isn’t full of building rubble on a plot that wasn’t part of a shanty town 50 years ago, and about 8m squared to grow food for ourselves, as well as 20 m squared for the school. It would be amazing but a LOT of work. 

update from the countryside

I’m still after some good pictures of the almond grove that is now ours to work. But the harvest is basically zero which is a shame. I enjoyed some videos from Mas Les Vinyes this week and have started a conversation with the food forest group about using “Rock flour” and seawater in the food forest. (Sergi.. 34 000 vistas en un video!! vaya felicidades!!). And the most exciting thing is drawing blue lines and circles on a map with Nick to design water retention on one of the new vineyards, and one of the new almond fields. 

We also seem to be making some progress with the permissions! I’ve finally found the answer to a 10 year old mystery about the request for payment of 252 euros that I didn’t pay in 2012. I remember losing the paper and thinking … well if it’s important they’ll ask again. Yesterday, the council asked me for evidence of payment of a tax I should have paid! Mystery solved! and now all I need to do is pay it to finish all paperwork for the agricultural buildings we built. There is also a reasonable chance, maybe 50%, that one of the two “técnicos” I’ve asked to figure out how to do the next piece of paperwork might actually manage to contact the council architect in the next two days. Exciting times my friends!

team 2023

We have been talking to some amazing people the last month and now have two super volunteers to start in Boodaville Barcelona in January 2023 – Emma and Baloo! We have four people learning all about the site manager and volunteer mentor role and are looking for ways to work together and cover all the reponsabilities and tasks required; Natalia, Jordi, Alex and Carlos! We have two volunteers confirmed for Boodavile Caseres 2023 – Sara and Klif, and we are looking for two more (1 from Spain) Info here

As always, there’s a lot going on; beautiful connections and rich activities in between the yawning and cups of black tea. This weekend we will be in Caseres, walking in the fields and listening to the river!