September tidbits

A few interesting things going on this week.

First, don’t forget to vote for the Trees for Troops program in the Pepsi Refresh grant contest. You can vote once per day online AND once per day by text. That’s 2 votes per day. USE THEM!! Click here.


Second, now that the schools are back in session, many tree farms are planning out their farm tours with school and youth groups. Harvest season and Christmas season are the most popular times for school tours at Christmas tree farms. Although, I’m sure many would love to have the groups out during planting season in the spring too. Here’s a link to a great article about a tree farm in Virginia that does a fantastic job with tours. They go way beyond just “come visit our farm” and incorporate solid education for the kids into the tours. It’s written from the perspective of teaching other tree farm owners / managers how to do better tours, but I think it reads well for anyone, especially if you are a teacher or a youth group leader interested in taking your group of kids on a farm tour.

Third, keep an eye out for the news around the selection of the White House Christmas Tree. It’s taking place a little earlier this year, September 28 to be exact. Now, they won’t actually harvest the tree selected until just before the presentation after Thanksgiving, but staff members from the White House will be visiting the farm of the Grand Champion and picking out which tree they would like. The Grand Champion for 2010 is Crystal Springs Tree Farm II in Lehighton, Pennsylvania. The farm is owned by Christopher Botek. You can read about him winning the National Tree Contest here .

Lastly, I was talking with a farm manager at the convention last month about purchasing trees online. His farm, The Rocks Christmas Tree farm in New Hampshire, sells a pretty large number of trees via online sales. The trees are shipped directly to your home. I was telling him that, while there had been numerous news stories about this over the years, it’s still somewhat of a surprise to most people that they can buy a tree this way. We even posted a video on our YouTube channel last year showing how the tree arrives and how easy it is to take one out of the box and set it up. Check it out here .

So our idea was to go even further and show a tree from “field to family room” as it were. He’s already selected a tree from one of his fields and tagged it. I can blog about it throughout the season and will post pics or vids of the tree all the way through the process until it’s set up and decorated in my home.

I don’t know....cool idea?

Here’s the photos of the tree selected.