Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, trees arrive in lots like the Ashland Lions Club’s, and families like the Pisanos set out to pick out that special tree to take home.
“The tree was an executive decision,’’ Kristin Pisano said with a smile on a recent Saturday. She nodded toward her sons. “They agree with everything we say.’’
Five-year-old Joey Pisano’s eyes got wide as the volunteers put the tree into the hatchback and its tip poked out. He seemed concerned where he would sit.
“Uh-oh. Tree’s coming out,’’ he said.
While his other mom, Raylin Pisano, and the volunteers worked to shift the tree across the front-seat console almost to the dashboard, Joey and his brother Lucas, 4, talked about Santa and Christmas over candy canes the Lions had provided.
Lucas said he is hoping for a track that allows cars to travel on the wall, while Joey described the Elf on a Shelf he regularly reports to, who lives by the stairs, communicates with Santa nightly, and flies.
It takes about eight years to grow Christmas trees, so the specimen in the back of their car was probably about as old as Joey and Lucas combined.
Ed Cyr’s Allagash View Farms, where Mase Robertson worked before starting his trucking business, has about 60 acres divided into eight growing areas. Each fall 10 to 12 students from the University of Maine Fort Kent work part time to cut the trees. Planting for a future crop starts in the spring.
The Lions sell two types of fir trees. Tom Heguy, the Ashland club’s secretary and this year’s chairman of its tree sale, now in its 25th year, has an easy way to describe the difference: a balsam has more smell, a Fraser means less mess.
Thomas Mikkelsen of Holliston knew the difference and picked a Fraser, a fir that is native to the warm Carolinas and loses fewer needles indoors leading up to Christmas. Mikkelsen, his wife, Lisa, and 10-year-old son, Clark, who were glad to be choosing a tree unhampered by gloves and snow, passed several Christmas tree lots, some with lower prices, on their way to the Ashland Lions Club’s offerings alongside Route 126.
