COUNTRY SKILLS: Keep A Living Christmas Tree

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To bring in a wild tree for this year's holiday, you must be sure it is stone dormant and then move it, roots and all (the reason moving a wild evergreen of any size is inadvisable, and if attempted, is a job for heavy equipment). So, wait for late fall and after the first frost—when deciduous trees' leaves have fallen. Pick a small tree of four feet high or less. Use a cutting spade with a sturdy, flat blade and a straight, sharpened tip to dig a circular slit trench. Make it a good foot deep and six inches out beyond the drip line. That's a circle four to five feet in diameter. Pry up the top three or four inches of soil and roots all around the trench and shove the spade in toward the trunk, severing roots where they dive into the ground. You may have to reach in under the disk and use a large knife or small saw to cut the larger roots.

When you have cut the root-and-soil disk free, lift one edge with the spade and work a heavy tarp in under both tree and soil (use a back-and-forth sawing motion with the edge of the tarp; you may need prying help from the spade and perhaps several flat boards). Do your best to keep roots and crumbly forest loam together (not easy) till the tarp (or tarps—you may want to work a second in from the opposite edge) is under the tree. Then, pull tarp(s), tree, and roots out of the hole and deposit in the center of a square of heavy burlap. Slip the tarps out (in short, snappy jerks that leave the roots in place). Finally, pull the burlap up in a kind of diaper and tie it loosely around the tree trunk.

I slide the hundred-pound bundle up into our high-wheeled garden cart and haul it to the house. Inside, it rests on several thicknesses of waterproof polyfilm so it can be watered daily. Tree and soil give the room a welcome pine-woodsy odor. The lump of soil and roots, hidden under an old sheet, provides a pedestal to raise a short tree to a satisfying level—and also makes the heap of presents beneath the tree seem larger that it is.

In decorating, I advise going easy with the tinsel—it is the very devil to remove from a prickly evergreen tree without knocking all the needles off. Modern tinsel lasts for ages and a be-tinseled tree looks strange outdoors.

After no more than two weeks in a dry, winter-heated room, the tree is returned to a predug hole in the meadow. Set the tree in straight, a little deeper than it was in the woods but not so deep that the trunk above where the roots begin to splay out is covered. The cambium layer beneath outer bark on the trunk must be free to breathe. The replanted tree should have its roots unbundled—just cut the twine holding the burlap around the trunk. Don't try to pull the burlap out, but do tuck all free edges down into the ground. Even a small corner of cloth exposed to the wind can wick moisture up to evaporate, drying out the root ball and killing the tree. Soak the root system well if weather is below freezing, then cover with loose soil removed from the hole. Form the soil in a shallow dish around the trunk. Tamp the surface well (but not too hard) around the roots. Especially if the soil is wet, you will squash air pockets that allow roots to breathe and permit excess water to drain away.

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