50 Days: Tree

I have mentioned the tree a bit before in my blogging. My grandparents live in the Valley and they used to own some amount of acres (I can't remember the number, 50?) that they leased out to a tree farm company. I used to love to go go Grandpa and Grandma's because they had so many places that you could explore.  Many years, I would drive over to their house around early December and we would take our "Beast" - 68 Ford Truck- and fill it with fresh-cut Christmas Trees. Most would be for our Church around four 5-6ft trees, plus one HUGE tree for the back, and then we would also get one for our family as well.  Those days are long passed and my grandparents don't own that land any more so when they sold, we had to resort to buying a tree at a lot. Not nearly as much fun. We were also shell-shocked at how much money trees were going for. We always got ours for free (Besides the gas to get there).
So, we bought trees at lots from then on. We had never gone into the woods as a family to get trees, they just weren't as beautiful as the Christmas trees you get from a farm. A few years ago, my parents did the thing I have always dreaded... they got a FAKE tree! I have nightmares about this. Mom says "But it's such a beautiful tree". Any fake tree to me is not that beautiful, Sorry, I am a Christmas Purist.

One year, my sister and her roommate decided they wanted to get a tree from the woods so they got the permit or whatever you need, and asked me to help by driving our Truck. Being icy roads, I was not comfortable driving the truck up the mountain, so we got in my dad's (now mine) green Breeze with a trailer hooked up to it for the tree hauling. We started driving up the Santiam pass and the snow was getting more and more intrusive. It got so bad that I did not feel it was smart to keep going. We found a place and turned around and went back to Sisters with no tree. Then we decided to go up towards Three Creeks Lake and see if it was better driving conditions and to see if we could have better luck. We had the same problem, ice and snow as getting worse and worse, but this time it was a narrow road that I did not find places to turn around. It got so bad, we pulled to the side of the road, I unhooked the trailer, drove up a bit and turned around to get back to the trailer. What a pain. Again, we did not get to Christmas Trees.  On the way back down, since they had a permit, they wanted to cut down a tree so they did at the bottom near Sisters.  It was a sad, sad tree.

This is a perfect day for blogging about Christmas Trees because I am in La Center today and have decided to go to a UCut farm to get my yearly REAL Christmas Trees. Lets hope it goes well.

28 Days until Christmas! 

May you find your perfect Christmas Tree this year!