Bagging a Christmas Tree

We all piled into my truck last week and trekked to some BLM land just south of Cuba, NM to harvest our Christmas tree. The permit was for either a Juniper or Pinon Pine. Juniper seems altogether to scrubby for a Christmas tree, so for the 3rd year running, we've got a Pinon Pine Christmas tree. After years and years of firs, pinon still seems a little exotic.

We tramped around for about 90 minutes before settling on the tree that we could all live with. It is about the absolute largest that we could fit in the desired location. It comes in at about 8'11" on our 9'0" ceiling. The base is so wide and bushy that it scraped up the walls in the entryway. I'm cutting it up before taking it out.

We tried to get a decent family picture, but apparently Jupiter was not in the right house as every shot had someone with their eyes closed or worse.

It took us another several days to actually get the tree decorated. Apparently my employers want me to go to work in order to get paid...But here it is, the Prairie Dog Rustler Christmas 2008 tree.