Boodaville is now a completely legal Rural Classroom with an Activity License, to run paid for courses!
Ever since the police arrived at our fantastic Boodaville festival in 2018, we have been in a paper trail with the local council. Producing reports, sending them to various government bodies, working with three different “técnicas”, getting through COVID, in which one of our técnicos nearly died, and having a second child. Then we waited six months for them to read a report sent last January, and finally finally received the Activity License to open as a “Rural Classroom” last week.
There are conditions, and honestly I haven’t sat down and read them all yet, but one we know about is that we will spend 6000€ building a flush toilet system and cheap non-ecological waste system for it. This makes no sense in our climate or with our values, but it ticks the box. Another condition that needs to be made clear to all visitors is that participants in activities cannot stay overnight. The aim was always to give a full immersion nature experience, but we are so happy to be able to set up and run guided visits, and permaculture courses legally, that we will run the activities with accommodation off site, about 20 minutes bike ride away. We also recognise the rather terrifying forest fire risk.
Boodaville finca and Rovira Regenerativa
So now we are working hard to get the site ready for guests. With info signs, completed permaculture design for the overall site, and finishing and neatening up on site examples like the grey water use, the hand washing / herb garden, the annual vegetable wicking beds, the nursery / workshop area, the compost system, the waste and recycling centres and more.
We also need to find 6k to do the toilet we don’t want; it’s future function is a learning example of a system that is wasteful of resources and NOT circular? I know this seems super weird to do it, but there’s been a lot of arguing with the council. When we get the next results for EU funding we will see if we can allocate enough from that budget to get this done. And combine it with a business plan to generate income from the activities. Also we are open to speaking to people who might like to manage the site and stay close by permanently, with income generated from the Boodaville activities.
I’m going to be a Permaculture teacher at Boodaville again! This feels amazing.
For Rovira Regnerativa we are really busy promoting the “Regenerative Weekends” where you can come and join in the collaborative work of restoring the vineyard, and learn from a wide range of experts as we put together a long-term drought resistant Regenerative Agroforestry system. The work with these weekends will support our activities until the 2025 harvest.
Beyond that we are putting together a business plan, and a funding application to function as regenerative winemakers, providing immersive hands-on experiences and sharing knowledge to our community. Then move on to produce other food – almonds, fruit, eggs, aromatics, vegetables in the following years. The funding needed is substantial! We are also looking to receive a grant to fund the salary of a young person, to work three days a week as our farmer and coordinating the work of volunteers and groups in the vineyard.
other Boodaville projects
We have welcomed Margot, Fanny, Victoria and Elena who are with us from the ESC project for four months. They will be between Boodaville – helping with the pruning, Mas La Llum – helping with our Youth Exchange, and Pipirimosca – with Pere Vidal.
We are having another big organisational meeting for our RegenerACT Youth Exchange in June 2025 at Mas La Llum this weekend. We will soon put out the call looking for participants resident in Spain, under 30 years old.
Thinking forward – we will soonbe looking for volunteers in Caseres and in Barcelona to start in summer 2025!
We also expect to run a training course funded by Erasmus+ in November 2025. I’m excited by a journey taking you through Deep Ecology then systems thinking and living the questions to falling in love with the future, then permaculture design which is where you can make all the brilliant visions happen! Very much about the WHY? with resources to help you find out HOW? after the course.
overall admin of the Association and communication
The day to day admin is going well, people get paid, accounts get done, with a reasonable amount of time spent.
The communication is TERRIBLE. Since we started talking about developing a communication strategy I seem to have stopped all social media posts. I love the idea of finishing a strategy and implementing it, but right now we’ve been about three weeks doing absolutely nothing. I don’t know who sees the website – which is back and looking good right now. I’m increasingly convinced that Instagram is useless for finding participants in paid courses. I have started asking EVERYONE who contacts us how they found us, and so far the reply was “GEN website” and “chat GPT when I asked about funding for permaculture projects”. When I meet someone who found us through instagram maybe i’ll like it more. (I don’t think that will happen). Good. Writing this has inspired me to talk more with the team and get to the bit where we turn the strategy into a job list!!! I’m actually thinking “What are the opportunities with Bluesky?” and “We should promote the Telgeram channel more”. If you read this far and you have ideas, I am ALL ears!!!
I’m off for a cold and somewhat rainy weekend at Boodaville Finca now! Until next time…
