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Originally Posted by Poe969
I've had a real tree every year for my entire life and I was almost insulted when my wife said we should get a fake one. She then said that if we are getting a real one, we should go out and cut down our own, I'm kind of against that for a few reasons; as pointed out earlier in the thread, there are actual Christmas Tree farms that employ a lot of people so it's helping the economy. Cutting down a random tree in nature can't be good for nature as there really isn't something to replace it unless you plant one but even still the new tree would take a lot longer to grow and effect the ecosystem. It's not the same as getting a farmed one because a farmed tree isn't taking one from nature, it's just taking it from a farm but that's just my opinion. But I think the most important one is that the tree that you go cut down in the forest never really looks as good. My brother in law always goes out and cuts a tree down with his family and it always looks like a crappy charlie brown tree. He counters that it's a fun day out in the woods but I always say that my wife, son and I can go out to the woods and still have fun doing stuff without having the stress of arguing which tree to get.
My big question for everyone here who gets a real tree is, what kind of stand do you get?? We had a really basic one and it ended up leaking and making a mess so we threw it out. What are the best tree stands out there???
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Just to let you know, when you go and cut down a tree in the wild, there are only certain areas of crown land where you are allowed to harvest.
There is a $5 permit you have to obtain which limits what you can take, how many you can take (3 trees), how tall they are (2.5m max), what conditions (e.g. you cannot cut one down if it's on a steep slope, cannot cut one down if it's in a reforestation patch, etc.). There are very limited areas that you can do this, and they are monitored by conservation officers who manage the tree growth and reforestation. The cost of the permit presumably goes to funding it.
To me, it's a lot like hunting licenses/tags. While I'm not myself a hunter, conservation officials spend an awful lot of time managing various wildlife zones, numbers of permits issued etc. to make sure that the human population is not having an adverse effect on the animal population. Same idea with the xmas tree permits.
I'm not saying you're wrong at all, I just wanted to let you know that the process isn't unmanaged chaos or done without a lot of thought put into it.
