creating a forest one tree at a time

In 10 years time if you find yourself in a little town called Beverly, 90 minutes East of Perth, on an old farm surrounded by the growth of a new beautiful forest- you can think of me, and thank me in your blessings.

This past weekend, I helped create a small forest. I planted 25,000 trees on an old farm with several other volunteers. It was probably the most satisfying, fulfilling, and hard-earned job I have ever done in my life, and I've never felt so good after a hard-day's work.

6 dedicated souls spent two days on Mic's farm which he recently bought. He has no plans on continuing farm work after living the life on a mango plantation for many years. He has a few sheep, but handed them over to his neighbor so he could revamp his open land. Mic told us that he wanted the birds to come back, and with all this land and property, he wanted a forest.

So Men of The Trees came in to help. Men of the Trees, or MOTT is actually the parent branch to City Farm, who currently employs me. Mott is another amaaazing organisation whose purpose is...well, yea, take a guess- to plant trees in an effort to offset your carbon emissions.
Mott plants about 800,000 trees each year- incredible right?

I got a last minute call from "purple Jazi", a friend from City Farm to see if I had Sunday and Monday free to go out to a farm and do some planting. After some quick rearranging ( I was supposed to do some gardening on Monday at a ladies house), I made some food to take up with me and threw a bag together.
We arrived early Sunday morning and some of the other volunteers had already started. Mic did a fantastic job of prepping the land and all you could see was lines marked out in every direction where trees would soon be planted.

With my "tree basket" around my hip, and potti-puttki in arm, I went to work. The Potti-Puttki (not sure if I spelled that correctly) is the coolest little gadget. Its this big metal pipe/shovel looking thing that you jab into the ground, step on a lever to open the bottom shovel, and drop a plant through the top pipe and there it goes.
This may sound really easy and not too labor intensive. Well, my initial thoughts were similar. However, carrying 150 small plants at your waist bucket and repeatedly shoving the potti-puttki into the ground...it takes a toll on your shoulder and arm.
By sunset on Sunday we were ready to call it an evening- watched the gorgeous sunset slowly descend into the Perth coastline, took a minute to relish in the fact that you couldn't here any vehicles or noise as far as your ears could reach, and prepared dinner.

Since there were only 4 of us staying through Monday, Mic kindly offered us the use of his shed and facilities for our overnight stay. We cooked up a mean veggie meal on a blazzzing fire, through some extra mattresses onto the ground, and cozied up for the evening.
I spent the majority of the evening talking to Robert, an older retired fella who is adamant about "getting the trees into the ground". Robert used to be a miner and is a brilliant guy. He explained to me the history of James Cook, the British explorer who accidently found Australia 200 odd years ago. Cook wasn't actually on an expedition and searching for new land. He had been sent out to observe the transit of Venus. Cook didn't succeed in this, but did find Australia instead. Weigh the options. However, interesting factoid on Venus: Venus passes between the Earth and Sun every 121 years. The next date of this occurrence will be in 2012, the same year the Mayan Calender ends.

Moving on. Robert was a cool old man. I really liked him. He has fascinations with the construction and building of ancient temples and pyramids. He wonders who the mathematician and architects where that built the pyramids, mayan ruins and Petras' temple and how they were able to be so exact and precise with measurements and with lining up angles with the solstices and shadows that would be drawn on exact specific times throughout the year. I think I liked Robert so much because I think about these things too :-)
Anyways, Robert kept saying that although he'd like to travel more, it's most important to "get these trees into the ground now". He must have said that at least 30 times in 2 days. He's really passionate.

Monday was a tough day. We woke up at sunrise and got working right past 7am. We had a lot to cover and there were only 5 of us, compared to 12 volunteers on Sunday.
We worked miraculously efficient together and every hour, would look at another rolling hill that in 10 years time would be a small forest in growth.

It was a good 2 days. I planted trees for all of my friends, Lots for my family, and some other people that I thought were in need of a tree in their name.

So take a deep breath and enjoy that good oxygen you're breathing in today.