The first weekend in December, our little family went out to cut down our Christmas tree out at Will Tree Farm in Copetown. In short order, my son picked out a beauty - an 8 foot tall pine that was very thick.
We cut it down and dragged it through the tree shaker and somehow managed to get this beast into the pickup. That's probably when we first noticed how heavy this sucker really was - the stump was 8.5 inches across.
We got it home and put it up in the tree stand that we bought from Canadian tire about 3 years ago - the kind with the extra water container on the side. While trees always drink a lot of water when you first cut them down, this a week later this thing was still drinking 2 litres of water a day. Work was keeping us busy so we hadn't got around to decorating it yet.
That's when my son noticed how sqooshy the run was around the tree. Yup, the tree stand was leaking. So, off to Canadian Tire to buy a replacement thinking "thank God we didn't decorate the tree yet". Three days later, with the new stand in place, we decorated the tree. The next day it began to lean forward. Reasoning that the bay window behind the tree will be replaced in the spring with a new one anyhow, I fired a heavy guage hook into the sil and roped the straight. The tree was so thick, you would never see the bright yellow nylon rope.
Two days later, my wife called me on my cel in a panic - the new tree stand was leaking. This is now like two weeks before Christmas and NOBODY had tree stands - certainly nothing better that what had already failed. My wife remembered that Lee Valley had a heavy duty one. She phoned the Burlington store, and while the computer showed none in inventory, the man on the phone was sure he saw one around there somewhere. So, with 30 minutes before closing time, my wife ran out there to pick up the new tree stand, and I got some of my buddies at TEGS Tools to come by. Gabe from TEGS came up with the idea of running a couple of hockey-stick shaped cherry boards through the center of the tree and picking it straight up, while my wife removed the broken tree stand and replaced it with the LV model.
What a great tree stand. Not only did it hold that tree firm, but it has the best adjustment system I've seen for a tree. And watering was finally made easy - that sucker hold about 3 or 4 litres of water and has a fill tube & funell.
Thanks for the helpful staff, and the quality merchandise!
Brian