By T. J. BANKS

My father had a small Christmas tree farm.  One year, he cut the trees in advance and set them up in the front yard. Many didn’t sell.  Dad hated the waste of good trees and swore he would never do that again.  He stuck to his word.  From then on, customers had to walk down to the field and select their own trees.

That was over 50 years ago.  In 2021, it was estimated that the U. S. had roughly 15,000 Christmas tree farms: many of them, like my father’s, were small, comprising 10 acres or less.  There can be some drawbacks to ye olde tree farm, especially if the owners use pesticides.  That’s where organic or “natural” farms come in. “Organic trees are a remarkable improvement from conventionally grown and artificial trees, in several ways,” maintains Beyond Pesticides.  “Conventionally grown Christmas trees use toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers for years before harvesting.”

Organic Christmas tree farms are, according to One Tree Planted, “both the ethical and sustainable choice: they can be great for the environment and for the people who work and live on them, for whom jobs and income are generated.”  Of course, you still need to make sure the tree farm’s certified: without that organic certification, as the Beyond Pesticides folks point out, “any claims of sustainability hold very little weight since it has not been verified by a third party.”

And lest we forget, tree farms do more than help us have our Charlie Brown Christmases.  In the words of writer Matthew Rozsa, they “give back to the environment.  Planting fields of Christmas trees helps fight climate change because, for every tree that is cut down in a year, there are many more that remain untouched.”  The trees that remain will trap “the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in their needles, branches, and roots.”  They also fight soil erosion; provide habitats for birds, insects, and wildlife; and give us the beauty of wild open spaces in an all-too-built-up world.  That’s a lot to celebrate.