A Visit To Mistletoe Acres And Some Christmas Tree Facts

 

We took the crew out to East Bridgewater to visit Mistletoe Acres Christmas Tree Farm.

You could always get a fake tree at the friggin' Wal-Mart, but this journalist doesn't view that as a feasible option when one can instead take the kids to an actual farm and patronize a locally owned business. I am very rarely wrong about such things.

With that in mind, we shall explore Mistletoe Acres and check out some Christmas tree history. You might even learn something before we're through, Hey Hey Hey!

Christmas trees date back to medieval Latvia and Estonia, and non-Christian decorated trees may go back to the caveman days. Evergreen trees were decorated in ancient China and Egypt.

The custom spread through Germanic territories to Western Europe, usually by the upper classes. Trees are referenced in 1400s Portugal and 1500s France.

The Christmas tree came to America with German immigrants. Our founding fathers failed to get in on this trend early, as North America's first Christmas tree was put up by Hessian soldiers stationed in Quebec.

Remember, Massachusetts was founded by people stuffy enough to ban Christmas in the 1600s, and the only things they hung off trees here were Witches.

America has since come correct on conifers.  America produces about 35 million Christmas trees a year, with Europe being good for another 60 million.

Americans spent 2 billion dollars on trees in 2016, making a liar of whoever said "Money doesn't grow on trees." We, sadly, spent 1.8 billion on fake trees.

The average price of a tree in 2017 was $73, and that price is about the same today.

America has 15,000 tree farms, including Mistletoe Acres. They provide at least seasonal employment for 100,000 Americans.

A third of these tree farms are, like Mistletoe Acres, choose and cut. This is good, because axes and chainsaws are always fun. No holiday is lessened by chainsaw use.

(pause)

OK, maybe Arbor Day.

Your typical Christmas tree is some form of evergreen conifer, like pine, fir and spruce. Some folks use juniper or cypress, and wouldn't The Starry Night look cooler if Van Gogh had painted some tinsel onto the cypress?

Mistletoe Acres has 7000 trees (4000 of which are in 10 gallon pots in their nursery). These trees are spread out over 3 acres. Mistletoe Acres has 8 acres, but the other 5 are for I-forgot-to-ask-what Farm Stuff. They move about 300 trees a year from the nursery to the field.

You can cut your own tree down if you want, up until they have played out their mature trees. We arrived after the choose and cut period... which is good, because Stephen is clutzy, and we really didn't want to end this article with self-amputation pics.

But enough of that talk... let's get us a tree!

First, you wander among the thousands of trees.

They have a lot of them.

Find one that the kids like.

Take it to this Santa's workshop place to pay for it.

They keep the stove going for you.

While the tree is being purchased, go to this barn...

...bother the girls as they make ornaments....

...and pick up a wreath cross.

They literally have a wall full of wreaths.

The Gang Of Four

They have all that crafty stuff that I don't know how to make.

Stephen volunteers for a charity, and has a bell that he rings. It makes a pleasant CLANK CLANK sound. Now, he has sleigh bells wrapped around his big stupid fist, and he sounds like a damned herd of reindeer. $12.50 at Mistleoe Acres, and we apologize in advance to the people of Sandwich.

Like I said, they have all sorts of neat stuff.

Wreath Sled, you say? Just happen to have one right here...

The reason that I write the captions instead of Stephen is that if I see the humor in "waist high mistletoe display," so will he. I'll mention it... he'll expound upon it.

Below, the tree shaker video. This removes loose needles, shakes loose bird nests and could properly mix a Paul Bunyan-sized martini. No squirrels have been evicted rapidly into the sky by this, but we can always hope.

They do the tree shaking for you, which is probably for the best.

They also have a machine that ties the tree up for you, which is important if there is a lot of Route 495 between Mistletoe Acres and our Plymouth office.

The tree wrapper looks like it fell off a DC-10.

Once the tree is wrapped, it's Chainsaw Time.

OK, we need a smaller car...

The finished product!

Christmas Tree Knowledge

- The star and the angel that you see on top of Christmas trees are symbolic of Bible stuff. The star represents the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the Magi to the manger where Jesus lay. The angel represents God's messenger, Gabriel. You know him from the Annunciation, which was when God, through Gabriel, told Mary that she would bear Jesus.

- Elaborate snowflakes are the most common non-religious tree topper.

- Christmas trees generally go up, even unintentionally with non religious people, along the lines of the Advent, which is the 4th Sunday before Christmas. This coincides with "after Thanksgiving."

- The tree tends to come down around the Epiphany, aka the Adoration of the Magi, which is when the Three Kings found Jesus.

- Traditionally, the tree went up on Christmas Eve and would come down on January 6th. This time span is what we know as the Twelve Days of Christmas.

- Queen Victoria and her Germanic Albert were sketched with their children by a Christmas tree in 1848, which boosted tree love in the UK and the USA.

- The first White House tree was put up by Benjamin Harrison in 1889.

-Teddy Roosevelt, an ardent conservation guy, refused to put up a tree. He was unaware that a tree farm generally plants more trees than they cut down.

- Thomas Edison's assistants invented electric Christmas tree lights. Candles were used before then, and fires were common.

- The Rockefeller Center tree first went up in the Depression, when construction workers pooled their assets and bought a tree. The tree is presently topped by a 500 pound crystal star. The tree has been up to 100 feet high, and has 30,000 lights.

- Oregon produces the most real Christmas trees. China produces the most (80%) artificial ones.

- Balsam Fir and Scotch Pine are the most popular trees, although it varies by region.

- 35% of trees are sold at garden centers/retail stores. 25% from cut/carry farms, 15% from tree lots and 15% from non-profits.

- Every year, Boston is given a tree from Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is a thank you for Boston sending aid to Halifax after an explosion destroyed half of the city.

- "Christmas tree" came in 8th in a poll of American's favorite smells. They were one spot higher than perfume, and one behind bacon. 

- American songbird Taylor Swift was raised on a Christmas tree farm.

- A freshly cut tree will drink a quart of water a day.

- Christmas trees take 7-10 years to mature. A shortage was feared for this year, as less trees were planted during the Bush Recession.

- Christmas trees are involved in one tenth of one percent of U.S. residential fires.

"Treasure" Hunting During Duxbury Seawall Construction

(Editor: The "treasure" is seaglass, hence the quote marks in the headline and the choice of this leadoff sentence. We don't want people running off to Duxbury thinking it is the X Marks The Spot on some Blackbeard treasure map.)

Duxbury is undergoing an ambitious seawall replacement project. They are tearing down old seawall sections, digging huge trenches and pouring concrete for the new seawall.

The old wall went up in the 1950s.  When it went up, it ended non-storm beach erosion for any ground west of the seawall. Many residents filled their yards in, bringing them up to level with the seawall.

All of the sand behind the wall would be buried, unmoving and essentially unexplored. Virgin sand, circa 1954. That's like, uhm, 70 years or something.

Your enjoyment of the photo above may be increased if you know that local legend claims that this yard supposedly has two Subarus buried in it. They were emergency fill after the Blizzard of '78. 

Everyone involved in the project is dead now, so don't write up any warrants.

As you can see in the photo above, we have a great deal of sand that is unexplored. The sand in front of the seawall washes around, moving southward down the beach with the current. The sand below the surface moves less, but even that is somewhat volatile.

You have to get a shovel and dig pretty damn deep to find virgin sand in front of the seawall. This sounds difficult, but "difficult" is actually getting at the sand behind the seawall. You need a steam shovel to do that.

That sand hasn't moved since 1954. 1948, 1957, 1971, 1982 and 1993 are the years we need to ponder for this article.

In 17th century Duxbury, people would save bottles and refill them, just like everywhere else in America. You left yesterday's bottles out for the milkman, he took them and left you today's bottles.

This changed following the Industrial Revolution. Mass-produced bottles were cheaper, and people no longer needed to worry about returning them. It was cheaper for the stores, too, which is why "no deposit, no return" is an expression. For every person in America in 1910, 20 bottles were produced. 

With no incentive to recycle, people just chucked bottles into the landfill... or out the car window, if a landfill wasn't handy. In that 1970s pollution commercial with the crying Sioux guy, he was crying because somebody chucked a bottle out the car window at him.

We did revert to recycling during WWII. Rationing made it necessary. Waste dropped into the single digits. That lasted until 1948. Your first aluminum cans, courtesy of the beer industry, arrived in 1957. This vastly lowered the amount of seaglass entering the biosphere.

Still, cans littering the landscape instead of bottles also leave a littered landscape. In 1971, Oregon instituted a bottle bill. Massachusetts followed suit in 1982. The consumer paid an extra tax, but gets the money back if they return the bottle.

In 1973, someone invented polyethylene bottles. By 1991, they were the most common beverage containers. The 70s also saw increased environmental awareness. Smashing a bottle on a beach would get you a laugh in 1930. It would get you a beating today.

The end result? Less sea glass.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, seaglass was easy to find. It is much more difficult now. I tell myself it is because my eyesight weakened as I grew to be 6'5", but I also wrote this article, so I know the real truth.

Fortunately, Duxbury is tearing down the seawall. They are exposing and displacing literal tons of sand. This sand has been untouched since 1954.

Duxbury Beach is just down the current some from the mouth of the Green Harbor River, and not that far the mouths of the North and South Rivers. It was (and is) a fine catch basin for seaglass.

Duxbury Beach still has lots of seaglass, but it is just buried under tons of shifting sand. I have no idea how deeply you would have to dig to get at the pre-recycling era sand.

However, seawall construction has turned over and exposed virgin 1954 sand. It has coughed up the goodies for the "treasure" hunter.

We remind our readers that you shouldn't go into someone's yard looking for seaglass, especially during a pandemic. We'd also actively recommend not f*cking around at construction sites which hold breathtaking buried-alive accident possibilities.

No, just walk the regular beach, near the seawall. You may be surprised at what you find.

Happy Hunting!

Help Team Remy And The DPD

"There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things."

However, there are some things we agree on, like helping children.

Dennis Symmonds is winding up 46 years as a policeman. A goal oriented man, he dedicated himself to raising $46,000 for Cops For Kids With Cancer. That's a grand for every year Symmonds served the town of Duxbury.

His original plan was to raise it by running the Boston Marathon with Officer Tougas. The pandemic nixed that, but that didn't stop Officer Symmonds.

He aligned himself with Remy Tufts, a brave Duxbury kid who is fighting cancer. Remy, the spiritual leader of Team Remy, also cannot be stopped.

Symmonds retires on July 9th. He has raised $42000 of the $46000. The goal is within reach.

So, as you celebrate the 4th of July tomorrow, why not show a little love for Team Remy?

Here is the Team Remy page, use it.

July 3rd Tides

The pandemic has pretty much squashed any July 3rd and 4th fireworks shows, as large gatherings are a COVID-19 breeding pool.

This includes the bonfires you see along the Irish Riviera on July 3rd.

I'm not sure if bonfires-with-permits are allowed. I'm just too lazy to check.

Sometimes, one must live outside of the law. Aristotle himself noted that "It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen." Howard Zinn told us that "Civil Disobedience is not our problem, our problem is Civil Obedience."

David Dellinger taught us that "There is a heady sense of manhood that comes with advancing from apathy to commitment, from passivity to aggressiveness. There is an intoxication that comes from standing up to the police at last." I should add that Dellinger is the author of "From Yale To Jail."

Remember that America itself was born by people who stuck a middle finger up at the leading authority on the planet, and that is exactly what July 4th is about.

I'm not here to tell you to break the law. My advice is to stay in. However, if you opt to be more Wolf than Sheep, it is our duty to tell you what the bonfire tides are.

Green Harbor, which also covers bonfire-crazy Duxbury Beach.... 10:49 PM, winds out of the NE.

Nantasket... 10:39 PM

Ballston Beach... 10:50 PM

Horseneck Beach... 7:34 PM

Nauset Light Beach... 11:12 PM

Scituate Harbor... 10:46 PM

White Horse Beach... 10:28 PM

Padanaram... 8:20 PM

Sandy Neck Beach... 10:32 PM

Mattapoisett Harbor... 7:36 PM

Falmouth Harbor... 10:21 PM

Wychmere... 11:29 PM

West Island... 6:34 PM

As you can see, we have two different tide ranges, South Shore/Cape Cod vs South Coast. You could also call it Too Early vs Too Late.

If you are hanging out at Padanaram (which sounds like a level of Hell, but is actually the nice part of Dartmouth), you have an 8:20 PM high tide. It will stay that height for an hour before slowly beginning to drop down towards low tide. Even efficient hooligans won't get the fire set up til 10 or so, at which point the bonfire goes from being a family-friendly event to a band of roving drunks with explosives.

Conversely, a Duxbury Beach reveler would have to start their bonfire well before the 10:49 PM high tide. This bonfire would be extinguished by the sea by the time it got dark. The downside increases if the tide extinguishes the fire before the larger pieces of wood burn down, which creates hazards for both the bathers and the boaters.

The bonfire pictured above is from Duxbury, during another 3rd with unfriendly tides.

Our Friend, The Lion's Mane Jellyfish

To be fair to the jellyfish, I think this is an edited image. A Lion's Mane Jellyfish is less wide and much longer.

Humans of this era are bred to fear sharks. While sharks are a good thing to be afraid of, they are not the only beasts from the deep who could come up and say hello.

New England, and Massachusetts in particular, have recently had sightings of Lion's Mane Jellyfish. The LMJ is perhaps the longest creature in the world, topping out among 36 meters or so. That jellyfish was measured off of Massachusetts, if that enhances the story for you somewhat.

His only rival is the Bootlace Worm, which owns the (disputed) record via a 55 meter monster who washed up on a beach in Scotland. The Blue Whale, which maxes out around 25 meters, is the heaviest thing on the planet, ever, at 400,000 pounds. That is equal to 20-40 bull elephants, or 2,000 Amy Schumers.

The LMJ is also poisonous. It most likely won't kill you, unless you are allergic or the pain debilitates your swim game to the point where you drown. It will, however, bring the pain.

It doesn't hunt humans. Like some whales, it favors plankton. It also eats small fish and other jellyfish. It stuns them with poison, then feeds them into the mouth. They digest food very quickly.

It has 1200 stingers, about 150 per lobe. It would be hard to get stung 1200 times, but you only need a few to be hurting. The stingers work for quite some time after being removed from the main body, a theme we will return to in time.

They only live a year, which is amazing for something that can push 120 feet. That's some fast growth. Primarily pelagic and dependent on currents to move great distances, they generally are pretty large by the time they near coastlines.

This monster isn't really monstrous. It won't sneak up on you, snap out a tentacle, seize you, drag you into a maw full of teeth and make you watch it eat your liver.

Your big threat with this is running into the surf and splashing into one. This will release stingers everywhere, so not only do you get it, anyone nearby gets it.

This is exactly what happened in Rye, New Hampshire in 2010. Some poor SOB jumped right into one and got stung. Officials sent out a guy to kill the jellyfish. A lifeguard dragged it ashore with a pitchfork, not knowing that the tentacles release the stingers on contact. The water filled with near-microscopic stingers , and 150 people were injured. They say it was just one jellyfish that did this.

Unfortunately, they are now turning up off of local beaches. Nahant closed the beaches after one was seen in the surf. Hull and Duxbury both had sightings. A jellyfish 5 feet wide washed up in Maine at the end of May. The one off Nantasket was 5 feet across, tentacle length unknown, and yes, my phone did try to autocorrect that into "testicle."

The 120 foot jellyfish measured off Massachusetts (I can't find out which town holds this distinction, every source I check says "off Massachusetts" or "Massachusetts Bay," which would imply Cape Ann and is thus some other writer's problem) was 7 feet across. The five footers we're seeing now would have remarkable tentacle length.

The one in Maine was longer than three children laid head to toe next to it, which sounds like 12 to 15 feet... unless the family in question was Shaquille O'Neal's family, or the Klitschko brothers. We'd be talking 18 to 21 feet, then.

If you lose the sea water lottery and get stung, rinse the afflicted area with vinegar for 30 seconds... because everybody brings a gallon of vinegar to the beach.

Here is a map of currents around Massachusetts. These benthic beasts travel with the currents. See you at the beach!

Duxbury Beach Seawall, One Last Good Look

Duxbury Beach is getting a new seawall, which means that we have to say adios to the old wall.

Partly due to winsome nostalgia and partly so we have something to compare the new wall to, we gathered photographic and video footage of the entire Duxbury Beach seawall.

We also have the remix version, below:

"slamming MCs on cement..."

Part II of the remix, below:

Wareham BLM, 6/6/20

Wareham had a Black Lives Matter protest Saturday.

The rally involved protesters marching on the Wareham police station.

There was also a kneeling section of protest with a moment of silence.

The WPD substation took no chances. To be fair, it reverts back to the Water Department on July 1st, and what odds would you set on two plate glass windows with WAREHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT painted on them surviving a police brutality March?

This dude was just regular paranoid. The march was peaceful. To be fair to this guy, and as someone who boarded up my beach house a few times for what turned out to be a minor nor'easter, I can say with some confidence that it is better to board up unnecessarily than it is to be sweeping up glass on a Sunday morning.

Heavy

Police

Presence

Bourne may have had 5 cops at their rally, which had almost 5 times as many people. Sturgis kids organized it, and Sturgis kids are efficient AF.

Bourne trended younger, whiter, fewer people arriving from taverns... more of a Pep Rally. Wareham, 33% black, was a much angrier BLM crowd. Watching this crowd come up the street was like watching a thunderstorm forming.

However, aside from some shouting, it was less menacing than I thought it would be.

The organizers did a good job, and the people were there for a good cause. No heads needed to get busted.

There were about 200 of us, but there was great potential energy.

The crowd was white enough that I didn't feel like Mr. Kurtz.

Good kids at both rallies I attended.

I had a protest crush on the girl in the dress, and she did say hi at one point. My game has actually been improved with the rioting. I have a cool job that puts me in wild scenes, and I have a thrice-bitchin' USA plague mask, which covers up my worst feature... my face. I'm a towering man, genuinely ugly, and I look somewhat like the Frankenstein monster. I will miss these days of pandemics, masks and rioting.

It took a while to get people kneeling, but once they Kaepernicked, all went well.

The kneeling was the evening's centerpiece.

Extra points for the functioning inland Gateway lighthouse.

Two straight protests where I forgot to wear black. I did have black running pants for this one, but my FAIRHAVEN BLUE DEVILS t-shirt was grey/blue. I didn't think of the Farrakhanian implications of "blue devils" at a BLM police brutality rally, I just collect local town shirts.

This rally was cooler than Bourne's because the old dudes in the crowd would yell at the younger ones if they started doing something stupid. This guy didn't tell at anyone, he was just photogenic 

"It was Saturday night in America, and I felt like a native son."

The angrier folks were upfront, with nothing between them and some ice-grill cops was Oxygen.

These kids social distanced well, but most of the crowd was jammed together like a Chinese subway.

Officers Baptiste and Declas, I believe. This got a pop from the crowd, although some girl behind me, with impressive lung power, kept telling "Token" over and over. The chief, who has a whole squad of other cops to deal with, declined any offers to Kaepernick or even Tebow.

The organizers did a good job, and it wasn't easy. There was a great deal of animus.

You don't gotta go home, but you can't stay here.