Okay; so recently Gerri, over at Absolutely True posted the following:
Dairy farmers have long known that adding one part bovine urine to 25 parts fresh water and two parts maple syrup will generally extend the life of a Christmas Tree by as many as five days.
To this I responded:
How long did it take dairy farmers to determine the exact ratio of urine to water? And how did the maple syrup get involved?
Gerri became, justifiably, curious as to why I would be the one asking questions; then she suggested that I may wish to answer myself. Now this is a bit of a departure for me. After all, why would a person write an advice column if he/she is just going answer his/her own questions. That seems quite senseless. However, just this once I will make an exception.
How long did it take dairy farmers to determine the exact ratio of urine to water?
First of all, it took many long hours of observing wild Christmas trees out in the pasture. And as you know, many dairy farmers are also botanists. These dairy farmer/botanists studied the trees when the cows urinated on them during a rain shower. Then they took note of which trees were thriving and which one were not doing as well. Next they had to calculate the volume of cow’s urine in relation to how much rain water was being absorbed by the trees. The final step was to perform the experiment on the domesticated Christmas tree. It took a little over five years, but they finally came up with the ratio of 1 part urine to 25 parts water.
How did the maple syrup get involved?
Well, I’m sure we all recall the origin of the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup. There was some guy walking along eating a chocolate bar and he ran into a robot eating peanut butter right out of the jar. The two foods came into direct contact and both parties agreed that the result was very tasty. It was a similar situation with the Christmas tree-urine/water. A robot was walking through the lab carrying a jar of maple syrup over to it’s human masters (because robots don’t care for maple syrup on their pancakes) and it accidentally tripped and spilled exactly 2 parts of the syrup into the urine/water. A few days later the dairy farmer/botanists noticed that this new mixture had a positive effect on the tree. They published a paper on the subject and ended up winning an Ig Nobel prize. Unfortunately, they made the mistake of not crediting the lab robot, which then became incensed and led a robot uprising…but that’s a different story.
LOL; great post…one question though, doesn’t the smell of urine take away any benefits of the tree’s long life?
Personally I would rather have a normal tree than a pee pee tree.
I mean yeah ok you get an extra 5 days but it’s an extra 5 days of a tree smelling like pee!
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Water destilated from the urine? That sounds really awful. But as it comes to Christmas tree they come from Germany.
Too funny. It makes me think of the best coffee in the world which apparently comes out of a monkey’s rump. I guess we don’t want to know the origins of these things in our daily lives
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Hah! that’s great! I’m not sure all that’s worth an additional 5 days of christmas tree life. I guess it would
if you put your tree up in early December. But not sure I would want the kids getting into that though…
Nice post!! The information you provided is very interesting about the Christmas tree urinewater. Buying gifts for everyone on your Christmas list can be a challenge. It is not always easy to pick the perfect Christmas gift even for people that you know well.
Wow I would have never thought that someone would even using urine in the water to lengthen the life of a Christmas tree. Thanks for the information
That is really funny. What were these farmers thinking when the started adding urine to the water. i wonder if they were eating pancakes at the time?LOL
I don’t even want to know how someone would come up with this idea… there must be something in maple syrup that makes you think: oh yes, Christmas tree longevity…