Harvesting Christmas Trees with Helicopters in Oregon

video via The Northwest Report

As America’s top Christmas tree producer, Oregon is home to some very large tree farms. To hustle the trees to market after cutting, many of these farms use an unlikely workhorse—helicopters. The helicopters lift bundles of cut trees from staging points in the middle of the heavily forested farms to trucks waiting on nearby roads. This 2008 video shows a Bell JetRanger ferrying trees with incredible speed and in very poor visibility. This 2010 video gives a pilots-eye view of the operation. And this 2010 promo video for Noble Mountain Tree Farm provides an overview of their helicopter harvesting operation (starting at 6:25).

video via Air Water Art

video via Noble Mountain Tree Farm

via MetaFilter