It’s Beginning To Look Like Christmas

 

Our first shipment of trees arrived at 10:00am on Saturday morning. We received about 150 trees, and had to unload the trailer and place them in the tent on some plastic sheeting. The size of the tree’s are from 5 and a half foot to 10 foot on this shipment. We will be getting some larger trees on the next one.

Thankfully I have 3 strong guys signed up to work as needed. These trees are very heavy once you get to 7 feet and above.  I quickly determined that a 6 footer was all I could carry by myself. It took us about an hour to get all the trees unloaded. The next step is to cut the trees, drill them for the stands and place them in the tent according to species and size. Our challenge for cutting and drilling is that we still do not have power. Luckily I have two Honda generators that we can use so we do not fall behind.  We can not work after dark due to no lighting yet, but we were able to get 3/4 of the trees cut and drilled and in water.

Max with two of our guys

We will sell four species of trees, Douglas Fir, Nobel’s, Nordman’s and Grand Firs. Once we started getting the trees unbundled and in location, all Max and I could say was how beautiful these trees are. They are top quality trees for sure. Max keeps teasing me about putting a 8 footer in the rig. Somehow I do not think our Fantastic Fan ceiling vent will be big enough to stick the tree through.

Sunday were were able to finish up the rest of the cutting and drilling and getting the trees in water. We will have to water them all twice a day and that takes about an hour or so to get done.

We should get another shipment either late Monday or on Tuesday. We will have to split this load, half going into the tent to finish filling it and the other in the back building behind the empty furniture store. As we need to re-supply the tent with trees, we will have to load them on a trailer and shuttle them to the tent. This is an extra step our location has to go through because we do not have a big enough lot to have a bigger tent that could warehouse our extra trees. The nice thing about this building is that we also get to use it for our Flocking room.

Flocking is a white spray that we spray on the tree to make it look like frost or snow. The customer can decide if they want light or heavy coating. The advantage of Flocking is that it preserves the tree. You do not have to keep it in water because it seals the moisture in. It also helps with people with allergies. The downside is that you loose that great tree smell.

We still have lots of finishing touches to do on setup, like getting Christmas lights strung, and the office organized. We are four days away from opening day and we are on the verge of panic. Getting power would be a great stress reliever.

This is hard work, lots of lifting, going up and down ladders and other things that makes a body sore. Moving the trees is the hardest part for me. If you ever do this make sure you have some young strong guys to help throughout the season. We did sell two trees while we were cutting and drilling the first shipment. That was the fun part!

Enjoy Your Day