The Phantom Planter

 On Friday when we were making the carparking spaces at our Lisnabreeny community orchard I had just paid a farmer friend of mine £70 for helping us out with his tractors and other machinery. He was reluctant to take it to be honest but I insisted as all that farm stuff is worth a fortune and would have cost us hundreds to rent it. Literally as soon as I give him the £70 a random guy stops in a van and says here take this as a donation towards helping out in the orchard. It was 70 quid he give me!!! That old saying a giving hand is a receiving hand came to mind. I couldn't believe it! Then last night I took a group of volunteers out for dinner as a way of saying thank you for all that they do for the orchards. The bill was £80. As soon as I got back home I opened up a message and it was a donation for £80!! You couldn't make it up!! Your donations mean a lot to me guys, it keeps my mission going forward. Past couple of days I've had a tree expert staying with me helping me ...

 Thanks for the donations yesterday guys, really do appreciate it. Takes a bit of pressure of me and lets me work more at ease with the trees. Going forward I think the only way is setting up a Trust and I pay myself a wage from the Trust. Get other people to do fundraising for the Trust and I can carry on planting and chanting and creating good content on here. Just recently I have been stopping and having a rethink at times, every orchard created takes up so much time and money to maintain. I worry at times about my financial situation. Its hard to try and raise money and at the same time do all the work that needs to be done. I never before wanted to go down the road of a Trust as its a lot more paper work and accounting, but its probably the only way I can carry on for the future. I hate making my posts about money. I just want to share positive content about what I do rather than having the begging bowl out all the time. Worrying about money also has a big impact on my daily p...

 The majority of everything I do is funded by myself. Always has been right from the start.  Just over the past year creating our new Lisnabreeny community orchard with over 600 fruit trees in it has caused a massive strain on me financially. I've taken on too much if I'm going to be honest. If it wasn't for volunteers offering free labour these projects would fall apart.  Hate even coming on here with the begging bowl. Its not me guys. I have always worked for my own money so asking for donations is really not my character. I've just finished planting over 500 community fruit trees all round South Belfast and hundreds of other native trees and never mind all the maintenance of the thousands more planted. Now onto grafting more for next year. My work is never done. Please if you can support us on the link below.  https://paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=FAJZHB3TBXMSL I've a little savings account of my own. The day I have to break into it I'm gone. Back to wh...

 What an amazing day of hard graft and camaraderie yesterday making some carparking spaces at our Lisnabreeny Community Orchard. Dont think I've worked this hard in years! from 7.30am to 4.30pm we worked none stop. I loved it though, think we all loved it. I take my hat off to all the road workers who are doing this type of graft daily, you couldn't pay them men enough. What a day we got for it though, the sun shined the whole day. Cant believe at times how this whole project has been coming together at this Lisnabreeny orchard ( meaning fort of the Fairy dwelling in Irish). There is definitely something magical going on here how its all come together. How the land came about being donated by the lovely owners and how all the right people with the right equipment happened to be all involved just living within miles of the orchard. The amount of volunteered labour thats went into making all this happen is unbelievable! You couldn't piece it all together any better if you tri...

 Turning the hood into a nature loving Buddhahood one tree at a time! I love it when people greet me in the estate with the peace symbol.  So many also that I chat too when saying goodbye they say peace and love... This is epic for me. As Big D says, if you think your too small to make a difference try sleeping in the same room as a mosquito! I love Belvoir estate South Belfast and the people in it.  Home of the Phantom Planters HQ.  Everyone in the estate has been so supportive and respectful of my mission. Its only with community support its grown like this. Thank you!  I challenge you to phantom plant a tree! Peace and love  The Phantom Planter and Wee Betty

 Got our first load of stones dropped yesterday for making some car parking spaces at our Lisnabreeny community orchard. We've a digger rented for Friday to get all this muddy patch along the fence dug out. We will then compress the stone along the fence creating a good few neat and tidy car parking spaces. So much to be done at Lisnabreeny this week and so much money needing spent also. I'm looking forward to getting the last of my oaks planted this week too.  Just recently The Phantom Planter has been taking up so much of my time and money. Its one of the reasons I've been putting out so many requests for donations. I wouldn't be asking if I didn't need it. January and February are the worst 2 months for my own business so I've been struggling a bit myself. The winter months are also the busiest for tree planting so more time has been going into The Phantom Planter than usual with less money coming in at the same time too. You can support us on any of the 2 li...