Replant.ca Environmental

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian organization whose vision is to help our global environment through planting trees. We build demonstration forests that are accessible to the public. We also plant in public parks, and we build carbon capture plantations that help mitigate climate change. Our operations are funded by NGO's, corporations, and numerous small donations from global citizens who know that their individual actions will help make a difference.

Showing posts with label forests. Show all posts

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Tree Planting Project at Herring Cove Provincial Park, New Brunswick (2024)

Our organization did some tree planting work at Herring Cove Provincial Park this past September. This work was funded entirely by the Forests Canada organization through their Forest Recovery Canada initiative as the Project Sponsor.

This provincial park is located in the very southwest corner of New Brunswick, on Campobello Island (which is northeast of Grand Manan Island). From the United States, Herring Cove is only a six minute drive from the border bridge at Lubec Narrows. From our home base in Canada, the route is slightly more complicated, involving two ferry crossings in each direction, first to Deer Island and then on to Campobello Island. Here's an overview graphic, courtesy of Google Earth:

The approximate GPS coordinates at the park visitor centre are: 44.87716, -66.93423

Most of the planting for this particular project involved planting tree seedlings where the Park staff wanted to improve visual buffers between camping sites (with existing sporadic mature trees). We also planted a few trees in some open areas that should be returned to forest land, and in parts of the understory where the canopy could use eventual thickening and diversity. The afforestation and the underplanting with both be important for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, and will provide additional habitat for birds and wildlife. Basically, several goals aligned with the work that we carried out. The following graphic shows the approximate locations for the new seedlings:

In total, our planting team added 13,443 trees to the Park this year!

Here are a few photos of the planting team in action:

This project went very smoothly. We were able to complete the planned planting on all of the current-year targeted areas within this park. We expect to return at some point in the near future to add more seedlings to additional areas. Naturally, we will also be making regular visits back to monitor the long-term growth and health of the planted trees.

We'd like to thank the staff at NB Parks for helping with the logistical planning that ensured this project came together, and we again want to thank the Forests Canada organization for being the sponsor that made this work possible.

You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Herring Cove Provincial Park" sub-folder. Start here:

www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

If you'd like to learn more about Herring Cove Provincial Park, visit their web page:

www.parcsnbparks.info/en/parks/6/herring-cove-provincial-park

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

Tree Planting in Mactaquac Provincial Park, New Brunswick (2024)

This past Fall (2024), Replant.ca Environmental finished the third phase of our long-term tree planting project at Mactaquac Provincial Park. The work that we did in 2024 was made possible by support from Forests Canada (formerly known as Forests Ontario), and their ongoing Forest Recovery Canada program.

Mactaquac Provincial Park is only a 30 minute drive from Fredericton, over to the west through either Keswick or French Village. The park is situated on the St. John River, across from the Mactaquac Dam and power generating station. This station generates one eighth of the electricity for the entire province of New Brunswick.

Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the location of the park:

Mactaquac has a golf course, campground, two beaches, hiking trails, and [in the winter] it also has cross-country skiing trails. The camping options are excellent, with around four hundred camping sites and several rustic cabins. The washrooms and showers were extremely clean, and the entire project was a wonderful experience. Here's a link for anyone who wants to make reservations:

www.parcsnbparks.info/en/parks/10/mactaquac-provincial-park

In 2014, the first named hurricane of the season was Hurricane Arthur. It was a very early hurricane, hitting North America in early July. It swept up the east coast and over the Maritime provinces. The winds did a tremendous amount of damage to trees and infrastructure, especially in the Fredericton area. Mactaquac was hit quite hard, and lost a lot of trees. Our goal was to start the slow process of replanting some of the areas that had blown down during that storm several years earlier, and also to begin creating new wooded areas in other sections of the park.

We had already done work in this park in both 2021 and 2022. The green areas that can be seen in the image below are from those earlier phases. This year, we were able to complete five more sections in May (outlined in red) and one more section in the September (outlined in blue), as can be seen here:

Most of the planting for this site involves planting tree seedlings in fairly open areas, where the Parks team is turning some of the under-utilized fields and openings into future mature stands of trees. This latter goal is important for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, and provides additional habitat for birds and wildlife. It also allows the Park to better manage their budget for grounds maintenance (controlling the costs related to mowing the grass). There is also some underplanting at lower densities in some of the thinner sections of woods that are still recovering from the damage created by Hurricane Arthur.

Here are a few photos of the team in action at Mactaquac:

You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Mactaquac Provincial Park" sub-folder. Start here:

www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

We'd like to thank Kevin (the Park Manager) and Rob and their staff for their hospitality and support while we were on site. We definitely look forward to returning in 2023 to continue the work that Forests Canada is making possible.

Jonathan "Scooter" Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Tree Planting Project in Gros Morne, Newfoundland (2024)

This past Fall (2024), Replant.ca Environmental was able to assist with more tree planting work in Gros Morne National Park. Gros Morne is located on the west coast of Newfoundland, near Rocky Harbour. If you're trying to drive there, it's about an hour north of Corner Brook (or four hours of driving north of the ferry terminal in Port Aux Basques). This project was organized and sponsored by Parks Canada.

Here's a graphic (courtesy of Google Earth) showing the approximate location of our planting sites:

Gros Morne is characterized predominantly by black spruce trees, with pockets of balsam fir, mountain ash (dogberry), tamarack (eastern larch), mountain maple, white birch, and some other deciduous species.

Some of Gros Morne consists of rolling hills covered with forests. Visitors will also discover exposed rock faces, bogs, ponds, and wetlands. Gros Morne unfortunately has a number of previously forested areas which were devastated by the spruce budworm several decades ago, which have failed to re-establish. These significant gaps in the forest canopy become more apparent when flying over the Park at low altitudes.

Here are a few photos of our team in action:

The work was quite challenging. Although the photos above don't show the most challenging ground, there was a lot of brush and vegetation to work through, and there were a lot of fallen tree trunks hidden in the grass and vegetation. Also, all of the planting sites required helicopters for access, which can frequently lead to significant downtime since helicopters often can't fly in Newfoundland's [frequent] foggy weather. However, our team loved the experience of getting to visit Newfoundland again. This wasn't our first time working here, as we did a similar project in 2023. Our numbers this year were higher though, with approximately 300,000 trees planted in Gros Morne in 2024.

All in all, this project was a very rewarding experience!

You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Gros Morne National Park" sub-folder. Start here:

www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

We'd especially like to thank Darroch Whitaker and the rest of the staff at Gros Morne for their hospitality and logistical support while we were on site.

Jonathan "Scooter" Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from NGO's, businesses, and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!

Tree Planting in Victoria Park, Truro, Nova Scotia

Our organization did quite a bit of tree planting work in Truro's Victoria Park in September 2024. This work was completely funded by Forests Canada, which was the lead organization on this project. Forests Canada (formerly Forests Ontario) is a wonderful organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees all over our country.

Truro is located in central Nova Scotia, and is often referred to as "the hub of Nova Scotia." From Truro, highways branch out in all directions to other points within the province. Truro is a small town which has an official population of only about twelve thousand people, but when you count everyone within a fifteen minute drive of the town, the number is probably closer to fifty thousand. That may not sound like much to anyone who lives elsewhere in a dense urban area. But Truro also has something else rather special. It has a municipal park, called Victoria Park. And that park is over three thousand acres in size! The people of Truro are extremely lucky to have access to such a large and beautiful park, located right inside the town limits.

But exactly how big is three thousand acres? Well, to put it into perspective, New York City's famed Central Park is less than a thousand acres. And Central Park has its own police precinct (the 22nd) which polices the 58km of pedestrian trails found there. Victoria Park doesn't have its own precinct, but it definitely has an extensive trail network.

Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada (courtesy of Google Earth), showing the location of Victoria Park:

When we originally contacted Victoria Park in 2020 to discuss the possibility of planting some trees there, we learned that there were several areas which could definitely benefit. There were a few sections where trees had been removed after being killed by insects. Also, the former municipal landfill (now decommissioned) was relatively barren. Although some parts of the topsoil cap over the landfill had already been replanted several years ago by the Scouts and other organizations, there was still a great deal of work to be done.

We started our work within the park that year, initially funded by public donations. However, we've worked in this park every year since 2020. Hurricane Fiona caused major damage to the park in 2022, so for 2023 and 2024, our focus was on adding trees to areas where the forests had been flattened by the hurricane.

Our work in 2024 focused on three main areas. We planted in the Gorge area first. That area had a couple of sections which were almost completely destroyed in the storm, so we planted high density to help bring those bare areas back to future forest cover. However, we also planted some additional seedlings (at much lower density) throughout parts of the Gorge area which were not heavily damaged, to enhance species diversity throughout the Gorge, and to improve long-term forest health.

In addition, there were two other large areas within the park that suffered major destruction, near the Wishing Well and the Vibert Trail. We were able to fill each of these areas with trees, and also plant in a small storm patch to the south of these two areas.

The blue shaded areas in the graphic below show the ground that was planted in the Fall of 2024 (green areas are sections that we planted in past years):

To date, we've been able to plant six types of conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, black spruce, white spruce, Jack pine, and a small number of eastern larch) plus six deciduous species (white birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, mountain ash, and red oak) within the Park. Our team planted 50,971 trees in Victoria Park in 2024 alone, thanks to the funding from Forests Canada!

Here are a few photos from our work in 2024:

You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Victoria Park" sub-folder. Start here:

www.replant-environmental.ca/photos

We'd like to thank Scott Holman and the park staff for having us, Don Cameron from the Department of Lands & Forests for helping with logistics coordination, and especially Forests Canada for being the Sponsor that made this project happen.

Edit: Here are links to blog posts talking about some of our earlier work in this area, in case you want to review the earlier projects that we completed:

replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2021/10/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html

replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2023/02/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html

If you'd like to learn more about Truro's Victoria Park, visit their website:

www.victoriaparktruro.ca

Victoria Park is the #1 rated attraction in Truro, and has over fifteen hundred very positive reviews on Google.

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Red Oak tree (Quercus rubra)

In today's post, I'm going to talk about the red oak, or more specifically the northern red oak. There is also a southern red oak, which is commonly known as Spanish oak. However, we're focusing on Quercus rubra, which is sometimes referred to as Champion Oak. We certainly think that it's a champ. Northern red oak is one of more than six hundred different oak species found around the world.

Red oak is more widely distributed throughout the central-eastern and northeastern US than it is in Canada, although it can be found quite easily throughout eastern Canada, southern Quebec, and southern Ontario. Incidentally, the red oak is the provincial tree of Prince Edward Island! It is also the state tree of New Jersey. Here's a range map for Quercus rubra, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The red oak is a deciduous (broadleaf) hardwood species. It has a very dense wood. In fact, it is denser than ash, chestnut, birch, mahogany, and walnut! While this makes it a desirable species for firewood, it's also the most commonly used hardwood in North America for woodworking and similar uses. You can find red oak in flooring, cabinets, pallets, coffins, railway ties, plywood, wine barrels, and many other applications.

"Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow." You've probably heard that phrase before. It first appeared in print in 1841 in a book called, "The Philosophical Emperor, A Political Experiment." (A.B. Johnson). But how large do they really grow? Well, that depends on the company that they keep. In a forest, a mature oak will often grow to 30 meters in height (almost 100 feet), with a trunk diameter at breast height of up to one meter (three feet). However, some oak trees grow out in the open, whether it is by chance (in nature) or by design (planted). Oak trees that grow in the open adapt to the higher impact of winds. These individual trees will develop deeper roots than red oak in forests, and don't put on as much height. Finally, they'll often develop much thicker trunks to keep themselves from blowing over, sometimes approaching 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter!

The seeds of the oak tree have a unique name, acorns. I tried to find out where that word came from. I found different suggestions. Some sources say that the name comes from the word "akran" in the Gothic language (an east Germanic language). Other sources say that the name comes from the word "aecern," which means berry or fruit in Old English. Perhaps it came from both languages, as some languages borrowed from each other thanks to the influence of travelers.

Acorns are very healthy to eat, although consumption by modern humans is uncommon. However, within the animal kingdom, acorns are a staple to many squirrels, mice, and other rodents. They're consumed in large quantities by bears, wild pigs, and deer. Many birds will eat them, especially jays, ducks, and woodpeckers. Acorns are rich in proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Unfortunately, the tannins found in acorns make them taste quite bitter to humans, which is why they aren't a popular food for us. Red oak acorns are especially bitter compared to acorns from other oak species, so it probably isn't worth your while to go foraging. If you do decide to try them for a snack, do some extensive research first. They should never be eaten raw. To cook them, you'll first have to learn to blanch out the tannins, which can be quite unhealthy. Also, a significant percentage of people are allergic to tree nuts, so eating acorns could be quite dangerous and lead to anaphylactic shock. Proceed with great caution! Acorns (and oak leaves) are also very unhealthy for horses.

Here is a photo of some acorns that we picked a few weeks ago:

Acorns are pretty. And quite recognizable. The leaves of the oak are also very recognizable, thanks to the large serrations on their edges. Here's a photo:

Oak leaves are different than the leaves of most other deciduous species, because some of them typically cling to the tree long after leaves of most other hardwoods have dropped. Nobody is entirely certain why this happens, but not too many species exhibit this behaviour. Trees that keep many of their old leaves through the winter are called marcescent species.

As far as deciduous trees grow, northern red oak grows fairly quickly. Even in the northern extent of its range (in Canada), the tree can grow to be as much as 5m high (16 feet) in just ten years. Red oak trees can have a very long life span. If they aren't disturbed by humans, insects, or wildfire, these trees can often live to be more than 300 years old.

Here are some fun facts about red oak trees:

- Acorns take two years to mature before they fall from the tree. This isn't the case with all species of oaks, but it applies to red oak. Also, some individual oak trees will produce hundreds of thousands of acorns in their lifetime!

- These trees are easy to grow, once you find acorns. The general method is to pick the acorns in the fall, keep them chilled (but not frozen) over winter, then to plant them in moist soil in the spring. Some people plant them indoors in small pots first (keeping the soil quite moist) and then transplant them outdoors once the seedlings have become established. There are lots of web sites that give more detailed recommendations.

- Red oak trees, like most humans, prefer sunshine. If you're going to grow them, you should plant them in the open rather than underneath an existing forest canopy.

- Oak trees first became a distinct species about 65 million trees ago. This means that they are much older than humans, and they started to appear about the same time that the dinosaurs died off.

Here is a photo of some of our red oak seedlings:

Thanks for reading!
- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes. If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them! The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!

Monday, February 24, 2020

The Black Spruce tree (Picea mariana)

Today's post is about a species which rarely gets any love. It's the swamp-loving black spruce (Latin name Picea mariana). Here's a typical photo, which I took from a helicopter in northern Alberta (the majority of these trees are black spruce):

Oddly enough, the black spruce doesn't have any other common names (except in French), regardless of where you find it across Canada. And you WILL find black spruce all across Canada. Its geographic range is much more diverse than even the Jack pine. Black spruce can be found in all ten provinces and all three Arctic territories. Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

It's quite easy to find specimens of black spruce. Just look for a swamp. Black spruce thrives in wet areas, even when the water is quite stagnant. Remember that all spruce trees love water, but most varieties prefer flowing, oxygenated water.

Black spruce has roots that are especially shallow and wide-spreading. This allows it to thrive in areas which are too wet for competing species. Trees, like many other creatures, can drown. Shallow roots help ensure that the black spruce does well in swamps. Trees need water, but they also need oxygen. Flood their root systems, and they will eventually die. Some trees can only tolerate root submersion for as little a week or so before they start to die. The black spruce can survive for more than a month. Regardless, their shallow roots make it less likely that they won't have any access to oxygen for extended periods. Unfortunately, it also makes this species susceptible to blowdown in windstorms.

If you take a close look at black spruce trees near bogs and swamps, you'll see that the closer you get to water, the less vigorous the growth.

Spruce trees rarely grow to be large trees. It is quite common for mature black spruce trees to be no more than 15m in height, although they can occasionally grow to 25m in really good conditions. However, you're more likely to see them in the 10m to 15m range. The trunk rarely grows to more than 50cm in diameter (a foot and a half) for a large tree. On a positive note, black spruce usually have very straight trunks, without a significant taper until the very top of the tree.

The top of the black spruce is interesting. The crown is narrow and pointed, and the small branches all droop, yet the tips are turned upward. Unlike the tips, the cones hang downward. Here's an excellent photo from Wikimedia Commons:

One of the more interesting things that many people learn about the black spruce is their long-term fire ecology behaviour. Black spruce trees often live in peat bogs, as well as swamps. Despite the moist ground, black spruce stands are especially susceptible to wildfires. If you're puzzled about this, it's important to know that monocultures (especially conifers) are often especially susceptible to wildfires, while mixed-wood forests with lots of species such as aspen will be less susceptible. Since black spruce is so much more tolerant of swampy/boggy conditions than most other trees (except for larch/tamarack), it tends to grow frequently in pure stands. These pure stands are susceptible to fire, despite the wet ground.

Black spruce stands tend to burn frequently, but they also regenerate quickly immediately after a fire (just like lodgepole pine). Therefore, a lot of black spruce stands tend to be very even-aged. Over time (centuries), swampy areas with black spruce will often slowly become filled in by organics, and the surface of the ground will become elevated and drier. As this happens, there will be ingress from moderately moisture-tolerant species such as tamarack, white cedar, white spruce, balsam fir, and eventually balsam poplar and trembling aspen. Don't judge black spruce as an ugly swamp tree with no significant value. In the long term, it's an important precursor to more diverse mature mixed-wood forests.

I'll leave you with three random facts about the black spruce:
- This is the provincial tree of Newfoundland and Labrador.
- Like red spruce, it is good for making spruce beer.
- Disposable chopsticks are often made of black spruce (or trembling aspen).

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and it made you appreciate this species a bit more. We don't plant very much black spruce at Replant.ca Environmental, simply because it's not great for long-term carbon capture, but it does occupy a small percentage of our annual seedling mixes due to its suitability (along with cedar and tamarack) in swampy ground. Here's a photo of some of our black spruce seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Saturday, November 2, 2019

The White Spruce tree (Picea glauca)

For this week's featured species, we're going to look at the White Spruce. The proper Latin name for this species is Picea glauca. White spruce is sometimes referred to as "Canadian spruce," although that's not an official name of any sort.

Some people refer to Engelmann spruce as white spruce, but that's a different species. Engelmann spruce is found at elevation in southern BC at the western US. Engelmann spruce is often crossed with true white spruce to create a hardy hybrid that is planted all over western Canada.

Here's a photo that I took of a white spruce, which I believe was probably about 30-40 years old:

The white spruce is a very plentiful tree. It's very healthy, and has a broad range. You can find this species all across Canada, except for the very southern reaches of BC and Alberta, and the west coast of BC (where Sitka spruce takes over). Here's a range map from Wikipedia:

Spruce trees, in general, love water. They typically prefer flowing (aerated) water, although black spruce can thrive in some pretty fetid swampy areas. White spruce is certainly quite happy to grow in moisture-laden soils. White spruce, like all other spruce trees, is also a very shade-tolerant tree. However, it is slightly less shade tolerant than red spruce (red spruce is a common tree in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). Regardless, white spruce will do adequately when planted under a canopy, or in areas with high brush and vegetation competition. However, white spruce seedlings can be susceptible to spring frosts. Having brush or a mature canopy over young seedlings acts to protect them until they're older.

When I was very young, I thought that all cones, regardless of what species of conifer the cone came from, were called pine cones. Of course, that was that naivete of a young child. The cones on spruce trees are called spruce cones. White spruce has two types of cones, male and female. Each tree contains both types. The male cones produce pollen, which floats to the female cones to fertilize the seed. After the cones are fertilized, it takes about three months for them to mature and open. When the cones open, the seed is dispersed fairly far from the tree, due to small wings on each seed. It is common for seed to spread more than 100m from the parent tree, thanks to winds. Although the number of seeds per cone varies, there are usually at least a few dozen seeds in a cone, and sometimes more than a hundred.

A mature white spruce will often live to be more than 200 years old. Some trees live to be many times older than that. After the first century, as long as the site and growing conditions are adequate, a white spruce will often reach 30m (100 feet) in height, and can have a diameter of more than a meter (3 feet) at the base. This species can capture very large amounts of carbon. Our Walker Road property has some beautiful mature white spruce that are starting to approach this size.

Although we don't harvest any of our trees at Replant.ca Environmental, white spruce is often used in the manufacture of acoustic guitars.

One way to distinguish white spruce from red spruce is by the colour of the needles. The white spruce needles are a bluish-green shade, in contrast to the more yellow-green shade of red spruce needles.

This year, we've planted many thousands of white spruce seedlings at Replant.ca Environmental. Here's a photo of some of them:

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!