Get a local Christmas tree
I have some neighbors who have their Christmas tree already. Crazy. We’ll get ours the weekend of the 12th and won’t put it up until the next weekend. We get a real tree every year, and while some people think it’s odd for an environmentalist to chose to cut down a live tree every year, it’s not so odd.
I did some research last year on real vs. fake trees. In my research I learned that Christmas trees are treated as an agricultural product and tree farms help preserve open land that might not support other agricultural products. Usually, when a Christmas tree is cut down, another is planted in its place. We’ve got 1,000,0000 acres of land devoted to growing Christmas trees in this country. That’s a million acres of trees helping to clean the air. Each air provides enough oxygen for 18 people. You can read everything I found out over on A Little Greener Every Day.
One of the arguments that some have against real Christmas trees is that they must travel from farm to seller and then from seller to your house. A lot of fuel is used and a lot of pollution is created in their transportation. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. You don’t have to go through a middle man. You can go straight to one of New Jersey’s many fabulous small tree farms and pick one straight from the farm.
We’re all about supporting our local farmers here on South Jersey Locavore, and even though tree farmers aren’t growing anything we can eat, it’s easy to see why we should be supporting them, too.
PickyourownChristmasTree.org has a list of all of the Christmas tree farms in the state where you can pick your own tree. They have listings for other states, too, if you’re not from around here. While I would love to give the pickyourown sites a good visual makeover (they are a little cluttered and too colorful to be easily read), they are so incredibly thorough with the information that they provide that I love them.
Not only do they provide you with the names of the tree farms, they give you other info like directions, information on activities on the farms, links to their websites, hours of operation, and types of trees sold.
They also have this piece of advice.
ALWAYS call the farm or store BEFORE YOU GO to confirm their supply, their hours and whether they are allowing choose-and-cut or just precut trees. All three can change during the short Christmas season, due to weather, demand and the farmer’s business conditions! Farms get sold, shut down or run out of trees, and I have no way of knowing, because I can’t call or visit every farm every month, let alone every day. For more tips to make your trip fun and successful, click here! DON’T DRIVE OUT THERE IF YOU CAN’T REACH THEM BY PHONE OR EMAIL!
We’ll be getting our tree at Exley’s in Sewell again this year. The kids like to climb on their big wooden trains and see their electric train display after we’ve picked our tree. It’s a fun afternoon out.
You can get more information about New Jersey Christmas trees at the New Jersey Christmas Tree Growers Association website. They have their own tree locator link plus advice on how to care for your real tree when it’s in your home.
