Tree Hunt

It was a dark and stormy night...

So goes the opening line for many a great adventure; and so began our annual Tree Hunt adventure, a trip to Kadee Farms to choose and cut our Christmas Tree for 2018.  It was a dark and stormy night on Thursday, December 13, as the local meteorologist showed us his weather radar filled with orange, red and green swirling over Dallas dropping an inch of rain and then moving east-northeast into Hunt County, the location of Kadee Farms, a place where we have cut our Christmas Tree for three decades.  We had purposed to go get our tree on Friday, thus clearing the calendar for busy weekend of Christmas Programming that Sue had immediately ahead of her as Director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church.  The formerly mentioned meteorologist has told us that the rain would have moved off to Louisiana by daybreak on Friday and we thought that was enough of a window to drive 50 miles east for a fresh tree.  It was a dark and stormy night... that lingered on into Friday as the weather system stalled and moved out slowly to the east, leaving us to gear-up with mud-boots, thick jackets for the 45 degrees with a brisk, north wind that made the dampness penetrate our skin all the more sharply.

For fortification, and for the sake of a long family tradition, we stopped for a barbecue lunch at Big Daddy's out on Highway 78 before we continued on to Kadee Farms.  Since it was a week day, Mr. Kadee would not open until 2:30, so we reversed our tradition and got the ribs before the tree; whereas we normally would get the tree on a Saturday afternoon and then get the ribs and brisket for an early dinner on the way home.

Sue is bundled and armed for the Tree Hunt
Our 3rd Decade at Kadee Farms

We had the wind-swept, puddled and muddy tree farm to ourselves as we studiously marched through muck to eyeball each tree within our 5 to 7 foot height range preference. My wife thought that the whipping and biting wind and gray sky was a marvelous set of conditions to be looking for a Christmas Tree, she yelled out, "I love this!  This is the way it should be!" We had narrowed our search to three candidates across the acreage, and circled around to each candidate analyzing the color, the shape, the symmetry, the straightness, the tapering of the topmost star-holding area and the height.  A Selection was made by the two of us well-insulated tree hunters and then my partner took a look at the muddy grass surrounding our tree and handed me the saw and said, "I'll let you do the cutting this year babe. Start right about there." As she pointed to a place on the trunk a few inches above the ponded water and weeds.

Dead needles and shaken from the branches
of our newly selected Christmas Tree

Wild Woman of the East Texas Christmas Forest

It was an especially good choice of tree this year.






















We set her in her fancy-pants tree stand and turned the 4 set screws to hold her into place, balanced and with symmetrical perspective.  Add water and wait for the elves to decorate it.  

In from the cold.  The Kadee Farms warming shack.
Hot cider is offered while the tree is cleaned and processed.

The elf came on Sunday when Sue was at work, to string up the tiny multi-colored lights.  The elf, being old and wise, plugged in each of the light strings to test their worthiness before wrapping them around the evergreen boughs. Once the elf had tested and thrown out one bad string of lights, the rest were place on the tree.  When the wise old elf threw the switch, the top and the bottom string remained unlit, while the center of the tree twinkled and glowed appropriately.  The old elf did his magic bringer-of-light dance around the green needles, throwing his hands in the mid-winter air wildly and chanting in elfish words that I can not transcribe here (as they are secret and sacred - or I am told).  He danced well enough to get the top string to twinkle soon enough. But his magic - or more likely, his dancing, was not quite up to snuff and the lower string remained dark and cold.  The wise old elf then skipped off to Walmart and found a whole aisle of brand new lights in need of no magic dances and bought a handful of them home for a mere $2.74 each.  It is a small Christmas Miracle.

Our Christmas Tree
Resplendent in Old Elf Magic and Lit by Magic Dancing

While the old and wise Interior Design Elf was suitably pleased with his magic, his dancing and his trip to Walmart, he skipped right on out the door and proceeded to wrap up the shrubbery and ash tree outside the house with his lights.  Some of the old C-9 bulbs that are almost as ancient as the elf (going back to the 1970's) had lost their magic and they were given to the trolls for who-knows-what- purpose.  But a few of the $2.74 box of lights were joyously wound around the trunk of the tree amongst the old C-9 bulbs that still had some magic inside.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here chanted the old elf as he danced until his red suspenders could hold up his pants no longer - and then he stopped and went home.  And it was another Christmas Miracle.

Elf lights in the front yard