BOODAVILLE

This is the second monthly blog post about life at Boodaville by our EVS volunteer Jessica! (Published a month late thanks to the fiestas !!)

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 tought us how to create our own “sourdough baby” as we call it (during the season our baby litterly grew up and we called it “masa madre”) and make the most delicious pita bread. Olivia moved on to persue 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 kickstart 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 tasts 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.

#permaculture #livingpermaculture #boodaville #nature  #education #permacultureeducation #regenerativefarming #ecoliving #project #design #organic #ecology #eco #permacultura #naturaleza #educación  #diseño #ecologia  #EuropeanYouth #EUSolidarityCorps #DiscoverEU #erasmusplus #fermentation #kombucha #pita

Happy Xmastime everyone. I wish you joy and time for connection; with family, with winter, with your desires and yourselves. 

This beautiful reflection is written by Aggelos one of two long-term volunteers this season:

Hello hello, probably for the last time, at least for this year. My EVS project has almost come to an end and it is in these moments when you think you would look back, remembering and reflecting upon experiences. But you don’t do it the usual way, just looking at photos, or wishing you relive some special moments because those moments are gone, they are in the past. That doesn’t mean you forgot about them but that they are a part of you now. You will never forget because you are who you are.

I cannot relate any more to the person I was when I first arrived in Boodaville. Frightened and scared that I had left everything behind, my friends, my family and the security of no change. The very first moments of complete sadness and without any sense of purpose. Looking around I could only see the emptiness and meaningless in everything. It was only when I talked to the people that were with me there about how I felt that I started to grow, to grow inside. No more wondering if I chose the right place, if I made the best decision.

“this was the first step to natural farming and reconnection with the true nature of all things. Because when you realise that the soil in your hand is not just a combination of water, minerals, organic matter and microorganisms but life itself, the essence of meaning, it is then you become whole not as a human but as part of everything and nothing.”

Continue reading “7 months living at Boodaville…”

4th October 2018

I’m back in Boodaville. It’s great to be back and follow the rhythm of nature to guide our days. I miss that in our everyday society. It’s very interesting to see how my fellow Boodavillians have changed in the 2 months I’ve been away. They are so free. So confident. In touch with theirselves and taking life day by day. It makes me realised how I have changed the last 2 months too. I adapted to life in our modern society again. Guided by the clock and appointments and my mobile phone. It is amazing how I bounced back into society life. Now I need time to bounce back in nature’s rhythm. The rhythm I prefer.
I’ve been doing various projects since I’m back. Redoing the insulation on the veggie fridge, making a functioning haybox (we need to find a new name for it… Aggelos suggested sheepbox as it is insulated with wool now, not with hay). We lit the rocketstove we made this summer for the first time. It didn’t go very well, there was smoke coming out everywhere. Jordi, who is in charge of this project, calmly started to repair and showed me how I can make the best fire. He announced me the firemaster. I’m also trying to bring a leather chair back to life by using the tools we’ve got. I love being creative. I keep surprising myself with the skills I never thought I had. I’m even learning Spanish. It’s hard to believe that I arrived only last week. So many things I have learned already.
Often we swim in the river and it’s not as pleasant as it used to be this summer. These days its more… refreshing I’ve got to say. And therefore  Continue reading “First monthly review from Jessica!”