***AS SEEN ON CHANNEL 4's 'Help! We Bought a Village', Business Insider, The Times, MailOnline, and The Independent***
With the help of our incredible supporters, we've planted nearly 3,000 trees and vines in the last two and a half years. Help us reach our target of 10,000 trees and 20 bee families!!!
WHAT THE FUNDS HELP US DO
Plant 10,000 trees in a climate-positive farming system, producing the highest quality olive oil, honey, wine, and truffles.
Airlines say 'click this button to offset your carbon emissions' but this generally means planting rows of unsuitable trees that hinder biodiversity and food production, and sometimes even prompt deforestation. In some cases, less than 10% of the trees survive. Help us do things differently. All our planting options include watering and protection for the trees!
HOW WE'LL DO IT
1. Improve on our current > 99.7 per cent tree and vine survival rate
2. Harvest water and use only rain-fed and gravity-powered irrigation systems
3. Not use herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers
4. Buy trees from local suppliers
5. Build healthy soil to sequester carbon on all land around the trees and vines by growing perennial flowers and crops
6. Not use plastic tree protectors
7. Propagate hundreds of our own cuttings to use for future expansion
8. Turn the valley into a bee haven
KEY FACTS
- Around 2.2 tonnes of carbon are sequestered by well-managed olive groves per hectare per year (Lopez-Bellido et al. 2016)
- Olive groves with crop cover can reliably sequester more carbon in the soil than typical forest ecosystems in comparable areas (Bateni et al. 2021)
PROGRESS SO FAR
Since May 2022, we have:
- planted nearly 2,000 olive trees of local ancient varieties, transforming rocky fields into lush and productive young groves
- planted more than 800 vines of ancient local varieties
- planted over 100 fruit, nut and truffle trees
- begun to restore a historic lake
- introduced 8 families of bees to the valley
- built two gravity powered natural water pumps to pump rainwater to our trees and the trees of a neighbouring small-scale farmer
- built a gravity powered irrigation system that directs water from our spring to our truffle trees