A tree farm turns

If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees. 
- Hal Borland

We clambered into the car, gloves and rope in hand, ready for our annual trek south to the Bucyrus, Kan., farm we know so well.

That’s where we find and cut our Christmas tree.  And although Meghan and Eric weren't with us this time – at school in Washington state – nor was friend and dog Riley, there were four of us … me, Cindy, Zach and dog Linus.

Plenty of help to get the job done.

The drive is always a delight.  Once we clear the cookie-cutter suburbs of uniform houses and strip shopping centers, Kansas reveals its true self … rolling blankets of brown and green dotted with the occasional red barn, white farmhouse and snatch of trees. 

And cows.  We all know a dog’s proclivity toward squirrels. Heck, we’ve seen “Up.” Mention the species and a dog’s head will jerk left or right in search, honing in like a Sidewinder missile.

With Linus, mention “Cows!” and he jumps up, puts his paws on the window and begins growling before he can even sight the beasts.  Because he must choose one side of the minivan or the other to peer out, he has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. My guess is he’s been pretty lucky.

There’s also a special oddity along the route … about two-thirds of the way there.  On the highway’s east side, in somebody’s back yard, there’s a life-sized statue of a bear facing the road.  It’s painted white, though it’s unclear whether it was originally meant to be a polar bear.  Its toothy, menacing mouth gapes wide, though, as if to say, “Better floor it, pilgrim.” 

We have a running joke with Zach.  When he was little, we’d drive by and yell, “There’s the bear!”  And Zach, always immersed in something else, would look up and say, “Where?”  But too late … we’d gone past.

Of course, by now he’s well acquainted with the bear and its location.  But Linus not so much.

“There’s the bear!” we yelled.  And Linus jumped to look, growling first … but he picked the car’s west side. Ooops.

We arrived at the farm, a bit concerned that they might not be open on a Friday.  But they were, although something clearly was different. 

This year, no net machine.

Usually there’s a rack of handsaws awaiting customers.  And a gas-powered contraption to shake the dead needles from a tree’s insides.  And a separate device for wrapping a tree in a cocoon of netting so it’s tidy for the trip home. Plus a few hardy high-schoolers to help process the pickins as customers return from the hunt.

Instead just the proprietor and his wife stood inside the shed.  He handed me a saw.

“The marked trees are over there,” he said, pointing to a small, flat area of the farm not far from the shed and the couple’s house. “That’s it this year.”

Not down the hill?  That’s where we’ve found most of our prior trees.

“No, not this year,” he said, then joked, “I have enough trouble standing up on flat ground let alone a hill.”

Except he wasn’t joking.  Our Christmas tree friend and his wife, after so many years of opening their farm and their hearts to customers like ourselves, were calling it quits.  Age has caught up with them, it appears.

“We’ll be open this weekend, but that’ll probably be it.”

One would think it was a sad moment for him.  But it didn’t seem to be.  He was cheery, probably looking forward to a season spent instead by the fireplace – hearing the warm snap of logs burning, not the cold growl of that tree-shaking machine.

Zach, Cindy, Linus, Riley ... earlier years.

So as we started our search, I looked across his landscape and thought of his legacy. 

Lots of memories for hundreds of folks like us, of course.  But all across his farm were the trees not cut … some large, many still small, but now all destined to grow big and mighty. 

After all, it will take decades before those suburbs catch up to this place and turn it in to a ticky-tacky spread of quick-built houses and burger franchises. Shoot, maybe it’ll never happen. Regardless, I’ll wager he’ll have his warm fireplace and his green forest for years to come.

Nor were we sad about the news. There’s a season for all things, we’re taught … beginnings and endings.  You ride with it.

Plus, one of our best tree memories didn’t happen on this farm but on another one, near Bonner Springs.  We went there when this farm was closed one season. So sometimes change is good.

I wrote about that escapade a few years ago.  You can check out my prior post.

On the hunt in Bonner Springs.

Or if you don’t want to do that, just know that Meghan convinced us to cut a tree with the girth of 10 Santas.  Beyond the embarrassment of driving it home at a turtle’s pace – it was so large it couldn’t be netted, and so sat atop our car like a schooner’s mainsail – there also was the challenge of getting it through the door.

We did, finally, although two draft horses would have helped.

I’m happy to say that, years later, I’ve taken some of the video that Meghan’s friend, Tiffany, shot that day and night and edited it down to a tree tale of sizeable proportions. Instructions on downloading the video are tagged at the end of this post.

Anyway, we didn’t have far to go to find a tree for this year’s Christmas.  It’s a handsome one, just the right size.  We’ve learned that sometimes you don’t aim for the biggest tree in the woods.

Zach took a picture of it.  I can’t comment on whether the tree at the top of this post is that tree.  I don’t want to upset Meghan.

With the tree tied on top, though, we headed home.  Oh … and we saw a few cows.  And, of course, the bear.

This time Linus jumped east.  They traded growls.  

To download a copy of the tree video, click here.  There are two versions ... the .avi version for the Windows Media Player, and the other for iTunes.  It'll take a couple to three minutes to load.  Like the tree that stars in the video, the file is fat.