Fundraising and Planting Update
This Saturday Oct 26th we are planting 250 trees and shrubs at Lavender-Blu EcoFarm in Seagrave. Because of the matching funding, we’ve ordered seedlings in some varieties, but larger ones in others. Also the kind of native species, for greater biodiversity, like Witchhazel and Basswood, have been included.
Fundraising for this second planting was different. We tried a Facebook ad to test it, but it wasn’t successful. We had less smaller individual contributions. But what was new this time was that there were a couple businesses and organizations that wanted to participate. One organization did Forest walks, (know as “forest shower walks”). They collected a small fee and donated it (unexpectedly!) to us. A wonderful small business owner put out a box and raised a bit of funds. There was also an educational institution that wanted to buy trees as a thank you for speakers at a conference.
In the end, we’ve just crossed the fundraising finish line with 2 days to go. Last time we raised more money in just 48 hours, so not sure what happened. The Federal government did commit to planting 2 billion trees if elected, maybe that was it. But the fact is we need trees here, to protect our local watershed and local biodiversity. We’ll keep throwing it against the wall and see what sticks in the spring.
To say each project is the same has so far not been the case. This time we’ve have less younger children coming to plant. But there’s a possibility of teenage youth coming to help. We estimate we need about 20 people for the 250 trees. We’ll report back.
This month, we received some feedback on this website/blog. In response we added a “buy a tree” button to make it easier for people. As we’ve been organizing and planning this planting, we’ve also reached out looking for a spring planting location. So far it hasn’t been difficult finding farms in the Kawartha watershed that would like trees. The key is finding a place where the trees will be cared for and people can come by in the future to visit them. People may move, but their trees won’t!
We’ll report back after the planting. It looks like there may be a bit of rain, but we’re crossing our fingers for sunny skys. Wish us luck!