“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. “Wendell Berry
Blustery winds, bluebird sky, powdery snow and a stuck truck all describe the site visit I made to a Christmas Tree Farm last week.
The Problem
The owner of this farm has been trying to solve this problem for nearly a decade. The trouble is some of the Christmas Tress are turning yellow in the center of the tree, the yellow needles hang on to the old growth, while the new growth shows no symptoms. This is only happening in one section of the farm, on a knoll, to Blue Spruces and White Pines. The most confounding part of the problem is that one tree will show symptoms and the same type of tree, right next to it, will look fine, as can be seen in the photo above.
So we ventured (in a truck that should have been just fine in the snow, but ruts created during the busy and wet Christmas Tree season got the better of it) to see what we could learn and to help this farmer secure a future for the Christmas Tree crop.
Bucks Horticulture 