Life's Pleasures: Our Own Christmas Tree, the hard way

Last year we bought our Christmas tree at a roadside stand near the house; it was going to be a surprise since it was still wrapped up in a net and covered with mud just as it came from the field. That's what you get when you buy the "bargain" tree on the lot. After wrestling it almost into our Aveo and bringing it home we unwrapped it, hosed it down, and did some serious trimming to get it to the size and shape we wanted. Then I had to give the car a good cleaning to get rid of the mud that came along with the tree. We enjoyed the tree, especially the woodsy aroma that it gave to the entire house.

Oregon is a major producer of Christmas trees; it is considered a farm crop. A tree takes 7-8 years to reach marketable size. Last year some farmers were hurt when large orders were cancelled, they hoped to make it up this year. BUT, the changing economy has put a real pinch on the Christmas tree market and many large orders have been cancelled. Farmers are looking to sell off their entire planting of trees and put the land to another use that will bring in the money that they need. As a result the price of Christmas trees has dropped dramatically; a Nobel Fir which would have cost $45-$60 last year can be bought for $15-$20 this year.

We need to do our part to support the local economy so we decided to buy a tree from a local tree farm this year. In addiditon we decided to locate, cut, and haul our own tree. Our daughter has cut their tree at the same place for the past few years. We went out this past Sunday afternoon to cut ours. The farm is located on a mountain road between Portland and the northern coast. The drive was breathtaking, much of the time in fog as the weather was changing and we had intermittent rain storms.

The farm is operated by the Bateman family. It is a "Century Farm" which is the designation given to Oregon farms that have been owned and operated by the same family for over 100 years.

After getting out of the car and arming ourselves with a saw we set out up the hill to view the possibilities. As you might expect, after several years of harvesting the better trees were located some distance from the road.

The Bateman farm has fir, spruce, blue spruce, Nobel fir, and several other varieties that I don't recognize. I gave Sandra the task of locating the tree we would harvest. Some were short and fat.

Some were skinnier

Some were just right but someone had seen it first and tagged it for harvesting later.
We finally located the "perfect" tree

All that remained was to cut it down

We took turns just to say that "we" cut our own tree this year

Now that its cut, the next task was to carry it down the hill to the truck for the journey back to town. We didn't take any pictures of our muddy boots and pants or our gum smeared hands.

After a night drying out the branches and a good shaking to remove loose needles it was time to bring it inside.

Our niece visited us Christmas 2006 and fell in in love with "living upstairs". She wanted to be sure the tree could be seen from upstairs and gave us instructions about where it should be placed.