The Strothi have been going to Kings Tree Farm for our Christmas tree every year for the past 6 years. This makes the fourth year in a row we've gone with Lisa and Willy to pick out trees together. I was a little worried about keeping our tradition, what with Lisa being super pregnant now, that she might not want to go with us after the first snow to get trees, since she'll probably have an infant by then... So we decided to make the trip today and stake a claim on our trees now.

Lisa and Willy found their tree first. I think it is a Scotch Pine, because it has fairly sharp needles.

Their tree is past the pond, our tree is right before the pond. How cool is it that our tree farm has a pond! With salamanders (which Willy caught to show Delia), and at least one GOLDFISH!

When we got our tags down at the House, the nice fellow explained to us about the Frasier Fir Shortage. He said that in recent years their farm had become so popular that they were running out of Frasiers, because that's what everybody seems to like best. Also, he told us the difference between their hand trimmed trees and commercially available machine trimmed trees, as an explanation of why their trees are so popular. They have about 40 left that are over 8 feet when they would usually have 400. So Frasier Firs are going for $10 per foot this year, fresh cut. They are getting in a shipment from another tree farm sometime next week, he hopes people will let some of the young Frasiers he has now grow up and in a few years when the crop matures the price will go back down.

All the other kinds of trees are still their usual price, and so we decided to look around and see what else King's Tree farm had to offer. I was pulling for a hemlock, but Delia decided on a White Pine.

Not this particular White Pine, but one very much like it that only shows up in the video clip I can't get to upload!

We will go back after the first snow to cut down our trees, and probably have a snowball fight too. And then we will come back and have hot cocoa, and possibly ogle a little tiny baby while we're at it.