12 Days of Christmas || End of an Era

A beginning of a new week, the only full calendar week of the party! Not sure how it's already day four and I still haven't gotten around to commenting on everyone's blogs *gulp*, but the Christmas season is so lovely and I'm trying to soak up every minute.

I have a rambly, life-related type post for y'all today... ;)

|| End of an Era 

As many of you know, my family used to farm Christmas trees for wholesale. There's lots of Christmas tree farmers in the area, so while that sounds cool and interesting and unusual on the internet (haha), it's not that foreign around here. If you were to say to someone here that your family farms trees, they would shrug and be like "oh, okay, so does *insert name of friend and/or family member*." It's pretty common.

ANYWAY. The Potts' have been Christmas tree farmers for all of my life, and most of my dad's life. My grandfather started it by planting trees on land he inherited from his father, in like the mid-70s. I think?

So, while the whole farming trees thing didn't usually interfere with otherwise normal life throughout most of the year, beginning of November through mid-December was the exception. Because all customers want their trees—and they all want them right then. So it's sell them now, or lose business and don't sell them at all. As Dad says, "no one wants to buy a Christmas tree on December 26th." Being on the go from the crack of dawn until after dark, with little time for anything but work, was accepted as reality during those weeks.

For all of my life, seeing piles of cut and baled Christmas trees standing in the ditches of the road while semi-trucks and trucks pulling trailers filling half a lane, waiting to be loaded with trees, was totally normal. Not only for us, but for neighboring farms as well.

Several years back, Dad made the decision to not plant anymore tree seedlings—there's a multitude of reasons behind that which I won't bore y'all with—then last year, he sold the last of the trees he had growing. And honestly, with this being our first year "without trees", I'm not sure any of us miss it that much.

It's weird to see heavily-loaded trailers and trucks pulling equipment on all the local roads, and not be among them. Fields once standing in rows of tall firs, with colored tags tied to their branches defining them by size and price, are now empty.

But, like different seasons of life, it's came to it's end and now something else will fill it's place. I find it interesting that this was all completed so near the end of the decade. Just as the 20-teen years are coming to an end, so is the Christmas tree farming chapter in Potts family history. ;)

|| 12 Days of Christmas Party 

Read Another Page — Book #17: The Bells of Christmas

Old-Fashioned Book Love — Book Review: "Emmanuel" by Angela R. Watts

Rebekah's Reading Room — The Price, pt.4

Tower in the Plains — Still Shining

The Peculiar Messenger — 12DoC | Christmas Books

in what way(s) is the end of the 20-teen years an end to an era for you?