It began as a little acorn of an idea, and within 10 minutes of the stroke of midnight it was a forest. The Mayo village of Balla hopes to have set the first Guinness world record for tree-planting in the early hours of the new century.
"If we'd been there all New Year's Day, we'd have planted a million," said an ecstatic former Garda sergeant, Stephen Clancy, as he surveyed the 2,000 oak saplings. "And you know, I had two large rolls of plasters, and we didn't have one cut finger."
Some 600 people turned up to participate in Balla's Dawn Oak 2000 project, which was largely the brainchild of Mr Clancy, with much local support.
Two years ago, severe Christmas storms devastated the ancient oak woods at Balla - pronounced as "Ba'al". The community's determination to replace it became the obvious way to mark the century's turn.
A year's planning paid off in the early hours of Saturday morning. After a week of torrential rain, gales, floods and snow, the night was clear, the moon and stars were out and there was a light frost forecast for the following morning.
A radio-controlled clock, which takes its signal from the National Physical Laboratory in Rugby, England, ensured that the effort would meet official Guinness world record standards.
At the stroke of the "new dawn", Mr Matty O'Dowd of the Balla Pipe Band struck the town's drum - a drum which spans three centuries and was used to rouse support during the land agitation period.
This was the signal to start, but not without some ceremony. Mr Matty Larkin, the town's oldest resident at 93 years of age, made the hole for the first oak and it was then placed in the soil by his grand-nephew, Mr John Larkin.
On the drum's third beat, the volunteers - or "Volunteers", as Mr Clancy may have begun to call his troops - moved forward and began digging. Mr Frank Vaughan, second-oldest resident at 92, set the 1,999th tree in the earth, assisted by Mr Tom Donohue. The 2,000th planting was carried out by Ms Margaret McNicholas, who uses a wheelchair and was one of the first trustees of the Balla Town Improvement Association. She was assisted by Ms Carmel Joyce, a young resident who has not been well.
The project attracted enormous interest and support, with Germans, Norwegians, Australians and "even people from Dublin", there to cheer the volunteers on. Greetings arrived by fax from the Republic of Kiribati on the other side of the world - "Te mauri, te raoi, ao te tabemoa" (greetings and blessings, peace, and harmony with nature and within the community).
The Dawn Oak project was being undertaken "in the spirit of tabemoa", the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Kiribati said.
The teams retired to the town hall for tea and refreshments, and most were in their beds by 2.30 a.m. The challenge now, says Mr Clancy, is to look after the wood for its projected lifetime - "the next 400 years".
The project has a website: www.ballatown.ie
