In years past, we have done as many others do - we've walked down to our local bodega/corner store, bought a Christmas tree and carried it home. However, having left the big city behind, we now know that North Carolina has an estimated 50 million Fraser fir Christmas trees growing on over 25,000 acres, and approximately 400 Choose and Cut Christmas tree farms - that's a whole lot of farms, serious acreage and a mind boggling amount of trees to choose just one from. But, it's the done thing in these parts and so we narrow it down to a tree farm owner we've come to know over the past year or so, and head off there.

As we near the entrance, there's a reminder of what country we're in, and yes a sign for Tom Sawyer's Tree Farm - Huckleberry is nowhere to be seen. The process of choosing and cutting your own tree on a farm is not that complicated. You head to the information booth, grab a ticket to tie to the selected tree, pick up a 12 foot long pole with 1-foot markers on to measure your tree, and off you head into the fields.

Fortunately we hadn't planned on ice skating on the warm winter's day we visited, or we would have been sorely disappointed.

It's certainly possible to spend hours wandering the fields looking for the "perfect" tree - the one that's just the right height, well proportioned etc, but if you're smart you find one that will suffice and call the guy over holding the chain saw and stand back...

And then they cart it off to the loading section, you pay up and they load it on the top of your car for you. Simple huh?

And just before signing off, a few more facts and figures about Christmas trees, most of them specifically related to North Carolina (credit www.ncchristmastrees.com):

• Fraser fir represents over 96% of all species grown in North Carolina.
• Fraser fir is grown in the far Western North Carolina counties which include Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey.
• There are over 1,600 North Carolina growers.
• The North Carolina Christmas Tree Industry is ranked second in the nation in number of trees harvested.
• North Carolina produces over 19% of the Real Christmas Trees in the U.S.
• The North Carolina Fraser fir has been judged the Nation's best through a contest sponsored by the National Christmas Tree Association and chosen for the official White House Christmas tree 11 times (more than any other species)....1971, 1973, 1982, 1984, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2005, 2007 and 2008.
• The North Carolina Fraser fir Christmas tree is the most popular Christmas tree in North America and is shipped into every state in the U.S. as well as the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Canada, Bermuda, Japan and other points all over the world.
• The North Carolina Fraser fir has soft, pleasant-to-touch needles, incomparable needle retention, long lasting aroma, and more pliable yet stronger branches for even the heaviest ornaments.
• Individual Christmas tree growers may sell anywhere from a few dozen trees per year to hundreds of thousands of trees per year.
• One acre of Christmas trees provides the daily oxygen requirement for 18 people. There are about 500,000 acres of Christmas trees in the United States which collectively provide oxygen for 9 million people daily. Young, fast-growing trees like Christmas trees release more oxygen than mature forest trees.

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