The new almond grove and a beautiful idea (On Fridays I write)
I still have the feeling that every day is like three days. Life is amazing and rich when what you do is in service to a more beautiful world – although day to day meetings, emails, not sharing on social media when you should do and accounting is still work. In parenting this week I have been sleeping slightly better and had three days of healthy children over the Samhain / Castanyada / Halloween long weekend. The last four days included fever, snot, a lot of coughing, diarrhea, nits, conjunctivitus and mild constipation among the children. I journeyed back from Caseres just me and kids in the rental car, we left two hours late cos I accidently wrapped up my wallet in the duvet while packing up and had to find it again. For some reason Joanna decided not to sleep and to cry all the way home. But somehow you rock out your superpowers and the three of us dealt with it together.
You get to be human
I had a tea with the lovely Betsy Reed yesterday. She messaged me before we met and refered to it as a Power Hour (she’s American). I wanted to talk about Rovira Regenerativa and what to do next, because I’m a little on stuck on whether to try and bring the non-farming members of the team out of the slump/minibreak, or to start afresh and create a structure and find new people, with clearly defined roles. Any advice or inputs of energy such as offers to chat and bounce ideas around, are very very welcome!
Anyway she said something nice about how humans are always obsessing with time, but we are not machines and mustn’t treat ourselves as machines. I like that, we are way better and more complex than machines, and everyone knows that productivity is not linear. Having a quiet cup of tea can help us get where we need to be. Plus we are all part of complex dynamic systems and things shift and solutions present themselves. She also quoted a management/business guru who said “80% of problems are structural” which I really like. A structure, with space to be human. That’s how we could function brilliantly.
meetings
During the long weekend I managed some positive meetings with Antonio who might get our permissions moving, Jessica who has agreed to help out one day a week at Boodaville, Nick and Silke who are awesome human beings and we mapped out the earthworks plan, Jordi who is interested in helping with site management and volunteer mentoring next year, and Manel who showed me a shed for sale in the village with beautiful views, that could, maybe, be a place to build my dream house. More on that another Friday.
the new almond grove
I also managed to find time to walk up to the almond groves we now have permission to work. There are no almonds at all due to the surprise April frost in 2022, but they are beautiful terraces surrounded by woodlands. The idea was to find a spot to build one 3m diameter 30cm deep hole to be a seasonal reservoir. Thinking about the logistics of bringing up a digger I’m confident to do a reservoir on each of the three terraces, as soon as possible. This blog post will now be shared with the Rovira Regenerativa agriculture design team and we’ll make a plan for this area to create healthy soil, thriving ecosystems and an abundance of produce from different fruit and nut trees, perennial vegetables and aromatic plants.
You can also see in the photos the position for the reservoir in the new vineyard just next to Boodaville, and a map of canals we want to dig. We are still discussing whether these are irrigation channels, or whether we want to adapt to make them on contour swales. The terrace seems to have a high point at the top at the back near the red brick shed, and then in the southern half of the field it slopes downwards as you walk towards the higher terrace. These are just estimations right now, based on the keen eye of local farmer Jordi from El Pinell! I think there’s enough space in between the rows of vines to do the ditch in between the rows, and we don’t need to remove any vines. Nick do you agree?
my beautiful idea
This is a work in progress. And actually I will give this text to the Boodaville Barcelona volunteers later to see if it makes sense, and see if anyone’s interested in developing it further.
As I was walking around Poble Sec appreciating the two species in our street that have amazing autumnal colours in their leaves I thought – What about an “Autumn in Poble Sec” photo competition to engage neighbours in a lovely project that might connect them to nature. Keep reading because this keeps on developing. Then the next version I thought of became; how about instead of entering photographs we make the competition about “Actions”. What about Autumn in Poble Sec Action competition : share with us something you have done which helps to create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.
Now how to explain what an “Action” competition is? I imagine that entries could be “I picked up beautiful autumn leaves and took them to nursery for the kids to play with” or “I organised a birthday party for my friend who was having a hard time and it was joyful and made everyone smile” or “I made all the halloween costumes this year out of recycled, natural materials to promote zero waste and circular economy”.
Let’s move on to the final version of what the “competition” could be. The final details are firstly that I don’t like competition, because in a beautiful world we are more about collaboration. But I don’t know what word to use instead to attract entries. Then, and this is the really good bit, to think about prizes. My idea is that we budget this at about 600 euros, and spend maybe 400 on prizes. The prizes are good enough to encourage participation. The prizes can be vouchers for different ecosocial shops and services around the neighbourhood. We could have several prizes so it’s less like a “competition” and we can decide which businesses to speak to. The Eco Social map of Poble Sec would be a great place to start but we can bring in different people and cultures and age groups to the “competition” by choosing other locations as well.
Imagine that you go into the shop that sells stuff for old people, or the barbers where there’s usually young men, or the supermarket specialising in chinese produce and you say to the person running the business “we are running a competition for people in the neighbourhood. if we get more than 100 people entering the competition we will buy a voucher for your shop with a value of 70 euros and give it to a winner.” The person running the business has a poster about the “competition” and knows that if less than 100 people enter they won’t make that 70 euro sale. Am I imagining it, or will this create a situation where the person who runs the business talks to the customers about their chance to get a 70 euro voucher? And the person who goes to that shop thinks hey, maybe I should take a look at this “competition” because 70 euros is a decent prize. The rest of the budget is for many many posters, design, planning and social media.
Reasons I like this
- opportunity for intersectional approach to a neighbourhood activity
- abundance thinking to receive goods and services without money
- creating connections between different people in the neighbourhood and promoting Boodaville Barcelona and Aula ambiental
- The entries will be shared bit by bit over time on Instagram and social media and will bring joy to people
- Everyone who enters engages with beauty, joy, love and ecosocial design in their own lives.
- Hopefully many many people are touched by the entries and actions shared, and inspired to do something themselves.
- could become a yearly activity
- could have events linked to it
- note : organisational work on how to present entries, make sure we get enough information from participants, data laws, transparency on how we “judge” the entries (in the SMALL PRINT is it transformative? is it inline with ecosical and regenerative design?)
- the important thing is the action itself, NOT how well it is presented.
Ok, so we’ll share the info when the competition is live, jaja maybe in autumn 2023!!
