The Hunt

We have moved to Christmas tree town.  This area grows many of the Christmas trees that are harvested and sent all over the west coast and apparently overseas as well.  It has made for an great learning experience of how the trees are raised and harvested.  Basically what happens is they let the trees grow all year and then toward the end of October you start to see people wandering the fields.  These people are evaluating the trees and shaping them into nice cone shapes.  Then in about the first week of November the place comes to life.  There are people all over the fields there are tractors and flat beds and semis crawling all over the area as trees are harvested, baled, and packed to go to where ever it is they are going.  Did you know they even use helicopters to harvest trees!!!  Yea, we have learned a lot!  It also brings a lot of traffic on the weekends.  Our sleepy little town is jam packed with tree seekers on the weekends.

So as usual we went out the weekend after Thanksgiving to look for our tree.  It was really cold and sort of drizzly.

 

 Can you tell by the look on Megan's face that is was colder than we are used to?

 After some looking we did find a tree.  While on our search we found these.  They are so pretty (and poisonous) we looked, but did not touch!

 This kid is so cute lately. . .I suppose it comes in handy to look like this when you have just done something you should not have!

 

 

 By this time Katie is tired of looking for a tree, and the hot chocolate is not keeping here warm.

 

 

 Here is Phil trying to bolster the troops that the hunt is almost over.

 

 

 And here is one of the helicopters I was talking about.

 

 

 Christmas tree entertainment.

 

 

 Ryan watching very carefully to learn the proper technique to cut down the family tree.

 

 

 He was very sure he could carry it by himself, and I am sure he would have had not these nice young men shown up. . .

 

 

I know it is hard to tell from the picture, but while we were getting it baled and out on the car, it started to snow!!!  The perfect way to end a Christmas tree hunt.