Give a New Home to Old Trees at Golden Web Retreat

I’m Anna from Jamaica on a small farm named Golden Web in Portugal that we're making into a healing retreat, we being a handful of volunteers who live here too. It'll be a place of peace and transformation, connecting our guests directly with nature and creating community for a better Earth. 

I’ve poured my savings and more into Golden Web, cleaning, painting, renovating and furnishing it to make it into a beautiful retreat for guests. The fields are empty as the land hasn't been cultivated in decades. We’ve planted a field of potatoes and beans with more to come. But those empty fields beg for trees.

We imagined starting with seedlings which we will still plant. Then our carpenter introduced us to an avocado farmer has no use for his olive trees. He said if we can move them, we can have them. Relocating the trees requires heavy equipment, a digger to excavate them and also to prepare holes for replanting them, as well as a small crane to hoist them up. They weigh over a ton each with roots and some protective soil. We also will need a large trunk to transport them to us. For all this, they estimate it will cost $8000, an amount that just wasn’t in our budget.

Where will we get the money, we wondered, and then thought, how about if people sponsored a tree or even part of tree?

We thought we’d add each sponsor’s name to a tree beside on a marker with a hand-written wish. We'll also email a photo update each year for two years as the trees take root and flourish in their new home. We’re about reciprocity and this was the best way we thought to repay your generosity. Your sponsorship will regenerate bare land and create a memory as long-lasting as the life of your eponymous olive tree that can live for a few thousand years! We hope you join us.

With love, Anna