We’ll take your (real) Christmas tree
- John Lorson
- December 19, 2021
- 830
Buying a “real” Christmas tree has benefits far beyond waking up each morning of the holiday season to the smell of fresh evergreen in the house.
By choosing a real tree, you are supporting a billion-dollar-a-year business that has conservation at its very core. Living Christmas trees are an agricultural product, often grown by local, family-based operations that span generations. Growers replace that single harvested tree with one or more seedlings, and the cycle begins again. It takes patience, hard work and an optimistic vision for the future to invest in a crop that won’t be ready to harvest for a decade or more. Christmas tree farmers play the long game, and in doing so, they generate a number of environmental benefits along the way.
As with any crop, the young pines, firs and spruces gather sunlight to produce their own food. In doing so, they gobble up carbon dioxide — the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gas — and free up oxygen. While doing so, they prevent erosion by holding the soil in its place and covering the ground with both their low canopy and cast-off needles.
That same low canopy also provides cover for a host of insects and small animals that are crucial to the food web. Because a young tree may take eight to 12 years before reaching a marketable size, the sloping hillsides into which they are planted go undisturbed and largely untouched by the erosive forces that carry soil away with each passing season on a similar field occupied by row crops.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits in selecting a real Christmas tree is the opportunity to participate in and teach a lesson of sustainability. The Christmas tree arrives to you in its natural state. It isn’t processed, milled, gutted, cooked or packed. It’s ready for duty right off the stump.
And while there may be some energy involved in transporting the tree to your living room, the acquisition and use of a real Christmas tree is likely to wind up being a “carbon negative” endeavor. That means the simple act of growing a Christmas tree for harvest may actually remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than is produced during the process of cultivating, harvesting and transporting the tree to your living room. As an added environmental bonus, the “life” you choose for your tree after the holidays can bring even more environmental benefit.
With this in mind, Holmes SWCD is staging a Christmas tree recycling program again this year. While there are other useful ways to repurpose your used trees, we are working with a pack of Webelo Scouts to create a wildlife shelter at the retired Holmes County landfill. These Scouts have demonstrated an interest in working and playing in the great outdoors, and a major focus in their Scouting curriculum has to do with wildlife conservation. What better way to nurture that conservation ethic than have them be hands-on in projects that encourage community service, recycling and waste reduction and offering a helping hand to the species around us?
Your retired Christmas tree can be dropped off at our office beginning Dec. 26 and lasting to Jan. 14. We are only accepting natural Christmas trees, and all decorations must be removed. Trees should be left in the back parking lot area under the building overhang (signs are posted). Contact our office with any questions about this program or other opportunities to promote wildlife habitat on your property.
Holmes SWCD is located at 62 W. Clinton St. in Millersburg and can be called at 330-674-2811 or email jlorson@co.holmes.oh.us. Follow on Facebook for current conservation updates and see the website at www.HolmesSWCD.com.