We all got up early to get a good start on the day. During breakfast, there wasn't much going on outside other than a really dreary yucky drizzle. Then the flakes started drifting down. Jumbo floaty snowflakes like they show in cartoons. By the time we were loaded in the truck and heading toward the tree farm, the roads were already getting some coverage.
Twenty minutes later, I'm driving a truckload of excited kids, and hauling a flatbed trailer, down a muddy unpaved road on the way to the farm. The 'parking lot' was even worse off, as parts of it was simply deep mud, muck, and slush covered with straw. No worries, the truck plays nicely in the snow, but I was definitely avoiding the bad parts of the drive. Digging anything out of the mud was NOT in my plans.
We grabbed one of the bow saws from the rack, and headed out to the fields. It was cold, but beautiful... all the trees were dusted with snow in their branches, and all the fields had a good 2" blanket by now. We didn't realize for a minute that the pretty snow was simply hiding the mud and puddles underneath. So we're marching the field in wet socks. Reminded me of spilling beers at GDays, actually.
The kids picked out a really nice looking tree rather quickly. Sometimes, this part is a bit of a challenge, but Ethan stepped up and made a very good find. It was shaped nicely, with real full branches, and had a good point on top. Consider it done!
I worked my face into the bottom branches so I can start cutting the trunk of the tree. This is where the fun began to fade a bit.... the needles were scratching my face, the mud was soaking thru my jeans, and every single giant snowflake was able to find the bare part of my lower back where my jacket had crept upwards. And the saw wasn't working.
One by one, the kids bailed to hide from the weather in the barn. They took turns pretending to check on me, but I think the message was more "are you done yet? are you done yet?". After a bit of fighting with the bad equipment, Missy went back to the lot and grabbed a different saw from the rack. This one had a much better bite, and we PaulBunyan'd that thing to the ground in short order.
Now we had to fight our way out past the legions of retards in the parking lot. The problems were compounded because there were people who a) didn't know how to load things on a roof b) didn't know how to drive in snow, and c) didn't know how to avoid getting stuck in the mud. I could feel the stupid attacking my sanity, so we completely bypassed the loading area, and just carried the tree all the way back to the truck.
This is where we found challenge #2. Imagine following a big-ass truck (a big ass-truck?) down a muddy dirt road. Now throw some salt, snow, and slush into your mental picture. All this mess is flying around behind me over a 30 minute drive, and if you were following, you just caught it all on your windshield. But wait! The trailer caught it instead! I was towing a huge pile of tasty muck, and had nowhere to load the tree.
After a bit of brainwork (made more difficult by all the stupid in the vicinity) we figured a way to wrap the tree before loading it. The farm was selling plastic "tree disposal bags" for getting it out of your house after the holidays without showering your carpet with dry needles. We bought an extra one, and used it to keep the tree clean and dry on the trip home.
After a grabbing lunch at Arby's, and resisting all temptations to spin donuts in the snow while towing a trailer, we got home successfully. I took our prize up to the back deck to do some more trimming and get it ready to bring in the house. Things were going great until I got ready to attach our 7" diameter base to the 9" diameter trunk of the tree. Uhhhhh, great job, genius. Measuring fail.
So now I had to get creative with the chainsaw. Leatherface what?!
Last year's tree was the fattest tree ever. 8' tall and 7' wide. That tree left us many good stories. This year's tree didn't break tradition. It was a fun, challenging, crazy, pain in the tail, and it turned out perfect!
Final thought for the week... Later in the evening, Megan made this snowman in the front yard, and I can't get over how much awesome it has!
= = = = = = = = = =
Paper Cannon - Kill the Bunnies!
Dodge. That's the name, the description, and the directions.
= = = = = = = = = =
Jess figured me out. The sole reason I started writing this blog to lay the cornerstone of my social media guru EMPIRE!!!!! (In layman's terms, that means I'm super effing awesome, and you should probably just start writing big checks right now and never stop.)
Sketchy Santas!
"Ridgemont High" meets "A Christmas Story":
Take a second look before you decide Santa isn't creepy.
The secret to world peace.
Joe & I geek out together sometimes. Create and register a scannable logo with BeeTagg. Use it for business cards, t-shirts, avatar, whatever. Phones that can scan tags will get automatically linked back to your e-content on BeeTagg.
My weekly installment of adolescent humor:
Yep. More lamebook. I can't feed my addiction fast enough.
= = = = = = = = = =
No comments:
Post a Comment