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I live in a rural area where Christmas tree farms are nearly as common as corn fields. The trees grow for a decade before reaching a marketable size, but in every other way, they are not much different from any other agricultural crop - potatoes or beets or rose bushes. When a Christmas tree is cut down, it is replaced by new seedlings.

In British Columbia, whole industries that have sustained the population for many generations are disappearing. Of course, logging has always been our main industry, but even with strict reforestation laws the logging industry is dwindling as forest fires become increasingly common with global warming, and vast insect infestations destroy millions of acres of healthy spruce and pines.

A second major industry, and a traditional way of life for our native peoples, fishing is dwindling along with the salmon populations, again probably due to global warming.

Christmas tree farms provide incomes for many families. They help keep the air healthy by screening out pollutants and providing oxygen. Hop farms once filled our valley, but the last one disappeared twenty years ago. Christmas trees grow where some of them once thrived, a cycle of rural farming life.

Aside from the economic and environmental benefits of the Christmas tree farms, there is the other side of the picture - the happiness Christmas tree farms offer so many families. The annual trip to get the tree is a treasured tradition in our family. I remember so many happy times as a child when my Dad would lead an expedition of booted, muffled, bundled children out into our own woods to hunt for the perfect tree. If we were lucky there was snow so we could pull a sleigh along to carry the tree home. Sometimes we did find a good one but more often it was the Charley Brown sort, bent and scraggly. Mom always worked her magic and made it beautiful.

As I raised my own sons the trips into the woods continued for awhile, but then it became illegal to cut down a tree in the forest so we switched to tree farms. Each year this little adventure became more precious to me as the boys grew and reached the stage where they could help find the right tree and help with the saw. Sadly, both have now grown and no longer come along to get the tree, but my husband and I still make a day of it. For many years I cared for two mentally challenged adults, brothers, who enjoyed the trip up to the mountain valley where our favorite Christmas tree farm is. They loved

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