In an hour I’m starting the weekend with my kids!
I’m going to continue my new routine of enjoying the children without checking phone messages, or trying to finish job lists.
I’m learning to find joy in the daily work of keeping things steady and really being with the small humans. I allow myself to just rest, connect with mundane tasks of tidying up and feeding people. Actually I recently realised that I was missing a trick by NOT having a huge bag of snacks in the car for the home run. As a permaculture designer I might notice the huge positive impact that a fairly small and easy to implement change can have.
Saying all that you might be surprised to see how much got done this week…
One of my favourite Ghandi quotes is “I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one”
My week was more like: I will meditate and play in the mountains for as long as I like and then probably be more productive than if i hadn’t
Things that happened by themselves….
On site at Boodaville Finca and the Rovira Regenerativa vineyard it turned out that Robin needed to do some practical work for his PDC using compost, and taking soil tests. These exact jobs were already high on the job lists we have, tick and tick.
Robin starts his contract working for Boodaville in two weeks and the time was ripe to figure out hours / weekly schedule. In two hours with a whitebaord we solved so much and felt great.
The trees and everything else got watered by the rain!!!
An invite to an AMAZING opportunity to see two of my biggest heros speak appreared in front of my eyes. I think this is actually related to Kate Raworth creating an instagram account!!! Kate was in conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer of the incredible book Braiding Sweetgrass. I actually switched off a bit while she was demonstrating the donut model, but jumped right back in to hear her talking about playfulness and being naughty, to mess with the narrative of economics, with her new Economic Circus project. Her instagram post about making Robin laugh is SO beautiful, damn she’s good at communication. Really really clear with her messages and they are such beautiful ones.
Well, talking of technology.. I paid for an “ethical” AI!! It seemed time – since I can’t seem to avoid the most awful ones, and I really need to move quickly when I’m writing funding applications. (The parts of running Boodaville that are as close as I get to “bullshit” jobs – Writing things that other people probably skim read, or not read at all). It was amazing!!!! I had enough info to feed it well and it wrote a whole Solidarity Project application for me from my summaries!
Vall Rovira neighbour Kate suggested ways we can collaborate to fix the track, just at a time when I need to get in touch with all the neighbours to talk about the work we are doing for the hidro design. She also gave just the advice needed to help me find someone to come with a digger – and Juan Carlos called ME this morning, at the perfect moment, just as I’d finished planting beans in the La Fabrica vegetable garden.
Things that were easy..
Once I got Nick Park to come over to Boodaville Finca it was amazingly easy to advance with the Hidrological Design – he did measuring and we prepared for getting the digger to come and shape the road for maximum water retention in the terraces by building shallow biodiversity ponds.
I made some seed mixes from what we had in the draw and the collections we’ve done this year.
1) A magical mix of the multi-species perennial mix we have leftover from the vineyard which has been sown with raking in the Thyme Terrace fruit tree project. Just before the rain!!!
2) A Food Forest mix, with some perfectly adapted seeds produced in the same food forest. This mix will be added as a guild to a peach tree Robin grew from seed and will bring in October.
3) A Balsa mix of cover crop, collected aromatics (lots of sage) and some hardy beans, and a few hardy fruit seeds as well (plum and almond). This will be sown immediately after we break the earth and disrupt the living soil when we work with the digger. The seeds will give the ecosystem the best possible chance to come back to health after the initial shock. (In the long term of course, the ecosystem will benefit enourmously from the intervention… an interaction to create conditions for more life!)
Collaborating with neighbours in Matarranya to put together the Solidarity Project we applied for: Boodaville will collaborate on the TERRA festival in April in Calaceite. A group of 6 particularly awesome people that I’ve crossed paths with lightly over the years are working together on this Ecological and Cultural event and they agreed to weave our youth project into the event. They helped us connect with interested young people in the area – we are so happy to create a project investing funding in the Matarranya!
It was far too easy to watch Tom Holland Umbrella dance several times. Thanks Kira for making my week better with that absolute gem!!
Things that felt like work..
Finishing the funding application and fighting against software that didn’t quite work. We got it sent before 23h though!!!!
Spreadsheets on Monday.. we have lots of funding, I must write an email to inspire clicks as people are Wowed and curious about how big we are. We really are – Boodaville turns over more than a quarter of a million euros each year!!! So on Monday I was in there adding new projects adding the budgets. It is satisfying, but the spreadsheet could be WAY better, and there’s one weird thing that doesn’t seem to work
Asking people for money. I need to learn how to do that. I find it easier to create projects and then allocate budget to Boodaville than to ask for donations!! Which is ridiculous because we have lovely wine, amazing ways to make the world better with funding we receive!!
And there ends a week of general amazingness, conversations with so many beautiful people, too many to name but hey why not try.. Sam, Nick, my Mum, Kira and Joanna, Robin, Ana, Kate, Juan Carlos, Bax, Angela, Igancio, EVERYONE at La Fabrica, Chloe, Estefania, Lucia, Eleanora, Elvira, Austin, Amanda, Phil Ball!, Guy, Rosie, Kathy!, Robert, Kerry!!!
If you liked the wine and want more, or if your friends and family are interested in getting some more, or learning about the project.. please share this on!
The Boodaville Association is fundraising to purchase the vineyard and secure the future of our activities!!
You can order wine here: https://boodaville.org/donate-here/
Abrazos from Catalunya!!
