Cutting Another Christmas Tree

Our tree stands were originally intended to be a Christmas tree farm. In fact, we still occasionally get mail addressed to Trout Lake Tree Farm. Of course, our trees are much too large for the average home; 20+ year old trees with 12 to 18 inches of growth each year just won't fit. (We have toyed with the idea of selling/giving trees to malls, churches, etc. who might have the space for such a tree.) But since we have to thin our trees anyway in order to give the ones that remain more space to grow, we invited our friends Dave, Jen and their daughter Ella drove out to our place to cut themselves a Christmas tree. Uh, what I mean is they came out to help us thin our stands to improve commercial harvest. That's what I meant.

We thought that the top of one of our trees could make a nice Christmas tree, so we started by felling a Douglas Fir. The tricky part, though, is that it is hard to see the top 10' of a 25 foot tree. Once we had it on the ground, it wasn't quite what they were looking for. We did some more looking and found a nice Grand Fir that needed to be thinned and fit the bill nicely. So the Douglas Fir became firewood, of course.

We're not sure how common we want this practice of allowing others to cut their Christmas trees from our place to become. Selecting a tree suitable for presentation AND also needing to be thinned requires some thought and searching; but most importantly, it requires us to be there. But at least this once it was fun!

- Mike (& Corinne)