The Roar of the Chainsaw, the Smell of Gasoline

Christmas Tree

Got the tree at Starkey's at the corner of Glencoe and NW Scotch Church Road. Formerly known as Larsen's. We have gotten most of our trees there. This one is a Nordmann Fir and cost $53. They had some Grand Firs and some Noble Firs, but no Douglas Firs. Seems there was a glut of them a few years back, so not so many new ones got planted. Takes ten years to grow a Christmas tree, more or less.

Oregon has these funny land use laws that are supposed to preserve farm land for farming, which may all be well and good, but it puts a crimp in the style of the nouveau rich techies who want a big house in the country. The only way you can have a house in the country is if it's on a viable farm. So what kind of crop do you plant? Christmas trees! So rich guys setting up their little 'farms' undoubtedly contributed to the glut.

When you bring a tree home, the first thing you are supposed to do is hose it down. This gets rid of any dust and critters who are living in your tree, and it gives the tree some water which it has not had for days. The next thing is to cut a inch or two off of the stump end so the live wood can suck water up out of the bowl.  Always before I didn't put the tree in the stand until I got it the house. Today I did it outside and it really works much better.

I fired up the chainsaw to make the cut. I tried cutting a tree with a handsaw once and it was a real pain. It probably would have been easier if I had the right saw for the job, but all I had was a selection of short, dull pruning saws, and an ordinary carpenter's cross cut saw. So now I use the chainsaw. Haven't fired it up since last Christmas. I had to start it two or three times to get the job done today, which meant I probably pulled the starter cord 50 or 60 times. But still, all I had to do was follow the instructions which were printed on the back of saw, and it started. Okay, I had to repeat the starting procedure a couple of times, but no monkeying around, trying to figure out what was wrong. Good job, Poulon. Amazingly the very same model is available from Amazon. Does this mean we have reached peak chainsaw? I mean, mine has got to be ten years old at least.

I think the monster tree we got last year was probably 15 years old. We cut off the bottom four feet or so leaving us with a nine foot tree. It was the first Christmas in the USA for my son in law, so we did the cut-your-own thing, and the pickings were we ended up were kind of slim. So we made do.