How they harvest Christmas Trees

The process is amazing.

First (and here's the obvious one) they grow the trees.
Next, they cut them down and put them into bundles.
Then, because those bundles are so massive, they bring in...

He flies in, is attached to a bundle, turns, and flies back for the drop into a truck. The whole process takes approximately 1 minute.

Helicopter rental: $750 per hour. Roughly 1000 trees are lifted per hour. Trees are wholesaled at $25 each, and sold to the consumer for more than that. It costs the grower roughly $.97 per tree to harvest.

We watch the whole process out the front window for free.

The helicopter was close enough this year for the children to wave and have him wave back.

And one more shot with Mt. Jefferson in the background.

Now. The day after Thanksgiving, start your search for the perfect Christmas Tree... buy Oregon. Search Salem. We watched them get harvested just for you.

CIDER!

I figured that since it's been a while, I should probably start with the oldest event first.

Apple cider. A Stahr tradition started - in our little family, three years ago when Andrew brought home an antique cider press. We've made mostly delicious cider ever since. (I say mostly, because last years cider was a little off... This year, we've outdone ourselves in deliciousness.)

The cider day dawned crisp and cloudy. Andrew and Savannah were outside by 8:30, getting the press all prepped for the pressing of 1600 lbs of apples. (Yes, you did read that right.) One Thousand, Six Hundred fantastic pounds of apples. In all shapes and colors and varieties. As I got some breakfast ready, Andrew and Savannah pressed some apples for breakfast beverage. They brought the first gallon in at 9:30 am. It was gone by 9:45 am.

This year, for the first time, Savannah was old enough to be pulled from "DUNK DUTY" and became a CRANKER. Andrew was Press Slave - once again.

LeGrand and Margaret were bucket fillers... a fun job when you get to go diving for apples in the massive bins! Sometimes, all we saw was this:

And then, he came up for air, and we saw THIS:

We pressed a grand total of 97 gallons of apple cider. It was a glorious day. Our freezer is now full.

Cider for sale: $8 per gallon. Shipping is extra.