By David Horst sandhill7@gmail.com
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| Our 2015 Christmas tree was not a ceiling-scraper, but it was a beauty -- a 10-foot Fraser fir. |
I discovered coworker a kindred spirit in a coworker this week when we started comparing stories about the greenish-brown streaks on our ceilings at home.
These are the marks of a homeowner who insists on a live Christmas tree -- a big, live Christmas tree. They appear when you push the envelope on your 9-foot ceilings or cathedral ceiling or two-story foyer and miscalculate by an inch or two.
Tip the tree up and the very top scrapes the ceiling. The combination of firm stem and green needles betray your miscalculation to all who enter your home.
We have a storied history of trees that push that envelope. None brought the woods into the living room like "the Beast." It was a massively thick white spruce that exceeded or 9-foot ceilings and was nearly as wide as it was tall.
We gave up significant square footage of living space that Christmas season.
My coworker had heard my stories of Tannenbaum excess in the past and sought my advice when she and her husband decided to find a different tree farm to assure they could add to their ceiling scrapes.
As it happens, we were planning to make a change as well. We have switched to Fraser firs. While white spruce has stout branches for holding heavy ornaments and the endearing habit of growing new sprouts on the ends of the branches even after it is cut and propped up inside your house, the Frasers hold their needles longer.
We found a spot that offers 40 acres of Frasers within a hour 's drive of home. After briefly discussing an excursion to Oconto for a tree, this was a relief.
Where is the Fraser nirvana? Would a trout fisherman disclose his hottest fishing hole?
We hooked up the trailer, debated our breakfast options and set off in pursuit of the ultimate evergreen.
My wife approaches The holiday with the intensity of a four-year-old on Christmas morning. Forty acres of Christmas trees pretty much guaranteed we had a few miles of walking ahead of us.
Normally this trip includes sliding the tree through the snow back to the checkout area. This year -- as we slogged down the muddy trails -- we were grateful that the owner offered a tractor and hay wagon to carry or prize -- and us -- put of the woods.
We found the land of the 10-footers in a back corner of the 40. We identified four candidates and shuttled back and forth, comparing the height vs. the saw in my outstretched hand, straightness of the stem and the extent of holes In the branch array.
A Fraser that just touched 10 was our winner. At that size, it would not add a streak to the cathedral ceiling in our current home, but it would still be a presence in the living room.
Cutting it right at ground level added significantly to the width of the trunk we would have to penetrate and the denseness of the grain. The tractor would come to check on us three times before we were ready to load our find.
Warm, breathless and mudded up, we climbed aboard the hay wagon with a blue-eyed central Wisconsin family for the bumpy ride back to the entrance. There the crew placed our tree into a shaker to knock the loose needles off and slowly drew it through the binder.
Normally we pass on tying up the branches mechanically because of the risk of breaking lower branches on the fat trees we normally are hefting out of the woods. This tree has more of the classic this pyramid shape so we ran it through without incident.
Having the branches bound up made carrying it though the front door of the house and propping the 10-foot trunk into the tree stand much less of a challenge.
We pulled off the orange plastic twine to set free the beauty we had see in the woods.
Several hundred lights, some well-aged strings of popcorn and our collection of ornaments calling out people and places from our past, and we will be set to enjoy the holiday season.
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