One Day I Woke Up And Needed a Fresh Cut Pine Tree…

…about 8ft tall.  Not too much shorter, no need for a short freshly cut pine tree.  And certainly not much bigger; simple could not USE a big freshly cut pine tree.

Oh yeah, and I want it delivered to my house.  Maybe-maybe not.  But at the very least, it has to be dropped off for me to pick up no further than 3 tenths of a mile from where I live.

And when I say freshly cut, I mean literally, this sucker was in the ground 36 hours ago.  MAX!

Sounds silly doesn’t it?

But that’s what happens where I live every single year.

Do you know what has to happen for a freshly cut pine about 8ft tall to be delivered to my door?  It means that some one about 12 years ago planted a pine tree in a pot.  Fed it and watered it and kept it safe from the elements.  THEN they took that seedling, which had been tended to for FIVE YEARS, and planted it in the ground.

Where it grew a foot a year.

5 years to become a foot tall seedling.  7 years to grow 7 feet to become an 8 foot tall tree.  THEN that person had to cut that tree down, load it on a truck and drive 3 hours to drop it off at the corner store about a quarter-mile from where I live.

Sounds crazy, right?  Sounds like something that only a Soviet styled comptroller could arrange.  I mean serious, who in the name of all that’s holy plants a seed in the hopes of selling it 3 hours away 12 years later?  A government troll forced to labor away for pittance, right?

Wrong.

In fact, the corner where my corner store is located is so popular that TWO independent tree farmers from the mountains of North Carolina each compete for the chance to pay $1200 or more in rent for the space in order to sell trees that they planted 12 years ago; in some case 15 or more.

And not one single one of those people were forced or coerced to do so.  They did it, acting only for their own self interests, all on their own.  All because by doing so, they would be compensated for their efforts in such a way and manner that their lives would be worse off if they DIDN’T do it.

If you are awestruck by the complexity of such a complicated set of circumstances that allow these trees to be delivered, in just the right size, color, species and time, consider how hard it was for you to handle the last contractor you had at your house.  Maybe it was gutters or a plumber,  Maybe a painter or hardwood installers.  New deck maybe, or maybe new windows.

They, in constant communication with you, and at a contracted time frame, can’t meet deadlines with such precision as these farmers meet the Christmas tree market.  Same with turkeys on Thanksgiving.  Without being told, turkey farmers make more turkeys every year right at exactly Thanksgiving.

Even more remarkable than the whole tree story?

At 7:00 pm on a random Tuesday night I realized that I didn’t have a tree stand to hold my freshly cut 8ft pine tree that was wrapped up for me and offered to be delivered to my house by the farmer who planted in 12 years ago.  So I went to my local hardware store, who was still open at 7:15 at night on a random Tuesday, AND BOUGHT A TREE STAND that would hold a freshly cut pine tree about 8ft high.

And if they hadn’t had one in stock, I would have been frustrated and pissed ’cause I’ve come to expect people to have things that meet “random” needs.

If you like magic and remarkable things like this, remember it, remember the “PFM”*  that coordinated all of this when you discuss taxes on people and businesses.

* PFM = Pure Fucking Magic

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