Looking for a well-paying job? Grow Christmas trees          

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            No doubt by the time this column appears in print we here in Kincardine will have had lots of rain – too much rain – but as of today it has been something like five weeks since we’ve had a good downpour, and I’m not talking about those 5-minute deluges after which you need a kayak to go from your garage to your mailbox, if you have one. We don’t, at least not a Canada Post one.

            It might be great weather for growing muskmelons, but I doubt that some potato farms and farmers are having a great summer. They can’t seem to win; last year there was too much rain and their potatoes got late blight (made famous in Ireland in the 1840s) and this year there’s not enough rain to scrub down a gnat unless there’s a monsoon that sends their topsoil onto the road.

            The word ‘drought’ could very well be applied here at our estate. Many times in the last month we have seen Mars Hill Mountain, across the St. John River and just into Maine, drowned in rain while the sun shone here. Other times the thunder rumbled and the rain fell to our south, in Carleton County, or up toward Perth-Andover and Tilley area while it continued as dry as a bone here.

            It all reminds me of the spring of 1980, just after I bought a house and fifty acres in Birch Ridge, near Maggie’s Falls, or Robinson Falls if you prefer. One of the things I did during the week after I moved in was dig up 55 balsam fir seedlings from the woods and transplant them into the field behind my house. That was to be the beginning of my Christmas tree plantation. I wanted to get wealthy too, like everyone else who had those plantations. Going into Christmas trees was like a licence to print money.

            I may have been over-optimistic. Since those days I have found out that not EVERY Christmas tree grower became a millionaire. However, my point is, I started into the industry with bright and shining eyes. With each seedling I transplanted, I watered it nicely from a spring on the sidehill of my property. It was quite a job to make that many trips, but I wanted them to get a good start. As luck would have it, it rained the next day anyway.

            A week later though, it hadn’t rained, so I spent a couple of hours watering the seedlings. A week after that still no rain, but I didn’t water the trees. I had an attack of ennui. A week later, I fell and hurt my leg and couldn’t water them. By that time I had resolved to just let nature take its course. Several of them had turned brown and were goners anyway.

            To make a long story slightly shorter, my estate went forty-two (42) days without one drop of rain. It rained in Plaster Rock, Sisson Ridge, Tilley, Currie Siding, and even Arthurette, less than three miles away, but not one molecule of H2O fell on Birch Ridge. When it finally did rain, it rained for two weeks, but only three of my 55 seedlings remained alive. Thus went my career as a Christmas tree farmer.

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            Notes from this year’s hot summer:

            I thought I had made my fortune last week – or at least a thousand dollars – when I bought a Duncan Fife table at a yard sale in town. They only wanted fifty dollars for it and I knew a Duncan Fife table like that would be worth somewhere between $800 and $1500. I strapped it to the roof of the Chrysler Intrepid and brought it home, beaming. I mean I was beaming, not the table. As soon as I came in my driveway, Flug came over and asked why I had bought the table when I already had three. I triumphantly showed him the underside of the table where the name ‘Duncan Fife’ had been signed. “Pity he didn’t know how to spell his own name,” Flug said. “It’s P-H-Y-F-E.” Don’t get me wrong; I like Flug, it’s just that sometimes he acts a little too – shall we say? – smart. “Anyway, I think it’s more of a style than the fact of him making them,” he continued.

            I watched a certain number of minutes of the Olympics, mostly after scouring the TV guide for ‘Beach volleyball’. I felt that because Canada had been a part of Britain, I should try and renew old ties by watching the Olympic Games from England. Particularly Beach Volleyball, which I noticed every network listed as coming on TV next. It rarely did, but I tried to support them – those scantily clad extremely fit young women I mean – by watching when I could.

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