Tree sourced

We don't believe in Santa Christmas trees. Rather we have, for the last 50 years, brought a Christmas twig in and suspended it in/from a living-room corner and festooned that with familiar fetish.  It's what we do but it has the objective advantage that our tradition takes up zero floor space in our modest home. I will add [high moral ground alert] that, as many now appreciate, growing a small conifer to 2 meters tall takes maybe 5 years. It then typically gets 5 weeks of useful 'life' and then becomes a burden on municipal disposal, locally: For the month of January at Powerstown, Christmas Trees go into Recycling area with no charge. That's moral hazard right there. You buy this thing, but everyone subsidizes the disposal of your choice.There is no way I would buy a Christmas Tree [YMMV, you do you, we're not normal]

But we-the-farmers are now being incentivized to extirpate "invasive conifers" from the common, these mostly sitka Picea sitchensis have seed-blown in from the Coillte forest immediately downwind. We've been on several collective sweeps through the more accessible parts of the Common but know there are trees further up that are beyond the jaws of loppers. You can see [not in this crap-pic but in reality] one near the skyline from the hill-road that runs along the border of the once-and-future forest.

Last Friday was a brilliant, sunny, crisp winter's day. I girded my loins, binocs, bushsaw, and a hank of rope and yomped up the hill. The roadway bit is easy: about 1,000m on a 1in10 grade, latterly a bit rough under foot. From the view above, it's another 70m at 1in1 = 45° through dead bracken Pteridium aquilinum and knee-high heather Erica spp. and gorse Ulex gallii and quite uncertain footing. But eventually . . .

Like I said, a gorgeous day. In short order, not without misgivings, I felled out this handsome neatly symmetrical tree [species unknown, help me out?] and rolled and dragged it down (much easier than going up) to the roadway. Where I was able to tie it down on a wheelbarrow and push it downhill all the way to the yard.

I've left the wheelbarrow in for scale, but this tree is 250cm = 8ft tall and looks as good as anything normal people would pay money for. The whole escapade took about 2 hours, which at minimum wage, is about what it costs to buy such a tree cut more efficiently with all the economies of scale beloved by Capital. I'm pretty chuffed with myself: using my ould knees while I still can and it's fine to be up on the hills sharing them with nobody. Now for the Twig