{"id":33854,"date":"2016-11-29T09:01:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T17:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/christmas-tree-hunting-in-the-capital-city\/"},"modified":"2016-11-29T09:01:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T17:01:07","slug":"christmas-tree-hunting-in-the-capital-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/christmas-tree-hunting-in-the-capital-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas tree hunting in the capital city"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c… a car stops and the rich mill owner\u2019s lazy wife leans out and whines: \u201cGiveya two bits for that ol\u2019 tree.\u201d Ordinarily my friend is afraid of saying no; but on this occasion she promptly shakes her head: \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t take a dollar.\u201d The mill owner\u2019s wife persists.\u201d A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. That\u2019s my last offer. Goodness, woman, you can get another one.\u201d In answer, my friend gently reflects: \u201cI doubt it. There\u2019s never two of anything.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 from \u201cA Christmas Memory\u201d by Truman Capote (1956)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What will the tree be this year? Real, artificial, craft or none? If it\u2019s none, I guess we\u2019re done here. If it\u2019s a craft tree made of books, beer cans, drift wood, hubcaps, twigs, antlers or whatever, good for you. Those are increasingly popular and some are just beautiful. For most of us the choice is between real and artificial.<\/p>\n

Full disclosure: I am totally biased in favor of real trees. Walking through that sweet conifer\/balsam smell at the tree lot when we were kids, wandering around looking at every tree, and bringing one home to set up on Dec. 17 (my brother\u2019s birthday) announced that Christmas season had arrived. Today getting a tree is a matter of an axe and a walk in the woods. Either way, on Dec. 17 it\u2019s always been real trees.<\/p>\n

The industry marketers for real and artificial trees are the National Christmas Tree Association and the American Christmas Tree Association respectively. Each claims to be cheaper and better for the environment than the other guys but over time the price is comparable and both of them have environmental problems they\u2019re working on. Here are some Christmas tree trimmings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Real Trees<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 30 million are sold in the U.S. every year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Almost all real trees sold come from American tree farms.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Over 100,000 people are employed in the live Christmas tree business.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Americans spend about $1.2 billion per year on real Christmas trees.<\/p>\n

\u2022 More than a million acres of land are planted with Christmas trees.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It takes six-to-eight years to grow a tree to market size.<\/p>\n

\u2022 An acre of Christmas trees provides the daily oxygen requirements of 18 people.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Trees are renewable and they biodegrade in a few months.<\/p>\n

\u2022 A lot of people who sell live trees, like Juneau\u2019s Minick family at Tenth Street Trees, donate part of their sales as an annual fundraiser for charity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Artificial tree <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 9.5 million are sold in the U.S. each year<\/p>\n

\u2022 Roughly 85 percent of artificial trees sold in the U.S. are manufactured in China.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Americans spend about $685 million on artificial Christmas trees each year.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Artificial trees don\u2019t shed their needles.<\/p>\n

\u2022 At the end of the season you can put it in the box and store it until next year. (That may or may not be an asset depending on how much storage space you\u2019ve got.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Artificial trees will last an average six to 10 years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Down side of real <\/strong><\/p>\n

Christmas trees<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most commercial trees get regular sprayings of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. There are standards regulating how long growers have to wait between the last spraying and when the tree is cut so it\u2019s more of an issue of environmental quality where the trees are grown than for the end buyer. In addition, some growers spray their trees with green coloring to make them look nicer. Driven by public demand, the industry is experimenting with more earth-friendly farming (like using ladybugs to eat aphids instead of killing them with pesticides, keeping the trees green with fertilizer, etc). Several tree farms around the country have been certified organic but at this point they\u2019re still rare.<\/p>\n

The down side of cutting your own means less habitat for birds and animals, potential over-cutting of young trees, and cutting in places like muskegs where the trees grow very slowly. Theodore Roosevelt banned Christmas trees from the White House for these reasons. Roosevelt\u2019s son lobbied the head of the newly founded U.S. Forest Service Gifford Pinchot for a tree. Pinchot explained to the president that thinning trees means more light, less competition for remaining trees and increased biodiversity. Roosevelt recanted and put a tree up in the White House.<\/p>\n

Down side of artificial trees: Non-renewable PVC and metal trees often contain lead, which produces lead dust, which contaminates your house. A University of North Carolina research group recommended that people should wash their hands after touching the tree, should not let children help decorate the tree, and that people shouldn\u2019t put presents under the tree. An artificial tree might also be sprayed with flame retardants. While most artificial trees last less than 15 years, they don\u2019t break down in the landfill and will be there for centuries. Plus they don\u2019t smell the same, Chinese factories are famous for treating workers badly, and it takes more fossil fuels to bring them to market. On the bright side, expos\u00e9s about Chinese trees have helped our country\u2019s artificial tree makers, who treat their workers well and don\u2019t use lead, to increase their market share.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Other live tree options <\/strong><\/p>\n

Keep a nice little indoor potted tree like a Norfolk pine and decorate that. The city of San Francisco has a new program where they will rent you a potted tree for $90 then, after Christmas, they take it back and plant it in a tree-starved part of the city. Then again, you can cut your own. Twice we\u2019ve cut a good one in our yard\u2014they seed in from a neighbor\u2019s tree. Most years, like Capote\u2019s elderly friend, we spend a long time in the woods looking for the right one. Hemlocks work fine if you\u2019re only going to leave them up a week. We get spruce because the needles last longer than hemlock. Spruce needles are sharp so kids aren\u2019t as likely to grab branches and pull the tree over.<\/p>\n

Helpful things for getting your own Christmas tree. 1) hatchet, axe or saw. 2) Gloves that spruce needles aren\u2019t going to poke through. 3) Some line to tie the tree to the car. 4) Attitude: Your free-range tree is like Katharine Hepburn, who was a knockout because she didn\u2019t fit the Hollywood beauty queen stereotype. You have to internalize that your tree has character and there\u2019s not another one like it in the forest. If you\u2019re on board with that, sharpen the axe, look at the tree-cutting maps and you\u2019re off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Juneau has three designated areas for cutting Christmas trees<\/strong><\/p>\n

One near Bridget cove and two on North Douglas Highway. You can find the maps and cutting guidelines at http:\/\/www.juneau.org\/lands\/documents\/14-03CBJTreePolicyandmap.pdf. The rules are simple. You don\u2019t need a permit, can cut only one tree per household, must stay in bounds, cut the trees close to the ground, scatter branches you\u2019re not going to use, etc. When you look at the maps you\u2019ll notice none of them include the muskegs. Every year on the way to go skiing you see people dragging trees back from the muskegs up on Eaglecrest Road \u2014 which is too bad. Those little muskeg trees can be older than the people cutting them down. Some are geriatrics that have been up there over a hundred years.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re looking for a wild tree consider the terrain. Some trees get most of their sunlight from one direction so they\u2019re only full on that side. Other times you see a nice tree but when you go over and shake the snow off it turns out to be two or three trees together, none of which would work. Keep looking. Patience is a virtue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One more option<\/strong><\/p>\n

Years ago my friend \u2018M\u2019 mentioned that she gets her tree under the power lines behind her place because small trees get plenty of light. They grow fast and full. She chops with a clear conscience because they would be cut down in a few years anyway to keep them out of the lines. This could be a gray zone legal-wise but here at Woodshed Kings we operate on a need-to-know basis. All I can say is, if you\u2019ve cut one under the wires and hear a car coming when you\u2019re hauling it out, this is a good time to channel Wile E. Coyote. Hold the tree up in front of you, run a few feet. Stop. Crouch behind it. Run a few feet. Stop. Crouch. At the road look both ways, throw it in the rig and bolt on out of there. Back at the house, when you square off the bottom of the trunk to fit your tree stand it\u2019s good luck to save two or three inches of it to burn up in the fireplace the following year when you bring in the current year\u2019s tree.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cutting your own <\/strong><\/p>\n

tree workshop<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Saturday, Dec. 10 between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. the Cooperative Extension, 4-H, Master Gardeners and CBJ are putting on a free, cut your own tree workshop at two of the designated areas. On the Juneau side people will meet out the road at mile marker 38. On the Douglas side people will gather at mile marker 12 on North Douglas Highway.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Dick Callahan is a Juneau writer and columnist for the Capital City Weekly, the Empire\u2019s sister publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c… a car stops and the rich mill owner\u2019s lazy wife leans out and whines: \u201cGiveya two bits for that ol\u2019 tree.\u201d Ordinarily my friend is afraid of saying no; but on this occasion she promptly shakes her head: \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t take a dollar.\u201d The mill owner\u2019s wife persists.\u201d A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":33855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33854"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}