Icky Sticky Christmas Tree Sap

Icky Sticky Christmas Tree Sap

A friend’s Christmas letter describing a search through the woods with his daughter for the just-right trees, and the “pruning” done by her goats on the way back through the pasture, reminded me of the remedy for pitch-covered hands.

It also reminded me of the days that we raised goats. Let me tell you right off that goats are smart, endearing, funny, empathetic, sometimes ornery, and very, very clean. They do NOT stink – except for the bucks during breeding season, when they exude an odor that would fry your brains, and engage in other “sexy” (to a goat) activities that the uninitiated deem disgusting. Just ask a female goat – all this turns her on to be receptive to the male’s advances. I once knew a buck named Don Juan, who lived up to his name – he would kiss, cuddle, coddle, nudge and noodle around with a doe until she was out of her mind with breeding fever. In other words, humans did not invent foreplay. 
 

They are also particular about what they eat, and where. They won’t eat anyplace that they have defecated. It’s a matter of internal health, to avoid parasites. They do NOT eat tin cans, or other non-organic stuff.   They do eat things you don’t want them to – they are partial to rose bushes for instance. But they also eat blackberry vines, nettles, cockleburs, and poison oak and ivy, which makes them welcome guests where those things grow. You have to be careful when they are eating poison oak. You can understand the book title, “Never Kiss a Goat on the Lips” if you think about it. Of course, a poison-oak-free goat really needs a good smooch now and then. Take my word for it: they are irresistible. (And yes, they will eat wood-pulp paper: it’s cellulose after all.) And they do have a very healthy appetite for tree matter, especially young tender fir boughs. 
 

In light of that, a shirt-tail relative by marriage of mine used to have a Christmas tree farm. No poison spray was used, and when they trimmed the trees to conform to public taste for shapeliness, she’d give me a phone call to come get some branches if I wanted them. I’d take the van and fill it with young tender boughs that the goats not only liked to nibble, but that they also would bed down on when they were fresh.  

 

And she taught me this one marvelous trick for cleaning the hands afterward: put a tablespoon or two of shortening in your hands and rub it in, then wash off with soap and water. Not only does the shortening saponify the pitch, it leaves your hands wonderfully soft.  

A friend of ours owns a third-generation tree farm, started by his grandfather and still being harvested and replanted in cycles. Our friend has been falling and hauling and sawing trees for nearly 50 years. Once he came over and cut down a dying fir tree for us, and when he was finished he asked if we had some gasoline or kerosene to clean his hands. I brought out the shortening and he protested, but tried it. He stood there after the “treatment” turning his hands over and over, and then said, “And to think that I have been pouring poison on my hands all these years!” 

So, if you venture out to collect a tree for Christmas or Chanukah or Solstice or whatever and it bleeds all over you, try rubbing in shortening and washing it off in hot water with soap. No hard scrubbing needed! No stinky chemical smell, no chemicals leaching into your skin.  
 

Who knew? Now you do!

Happy holidays to all, whatever you celebrate.