The gift that keeps on giving: Manitoba farm collects Christmas trees to feed their goats
Posted December 30, 2024 4:21 pm.
Last Updated December 30, 2024 6:57 pm.
With the holiday season coming to an end, many people may be looking to dispose of their Christmas trees.
At Aurora Farm, just outside Winnipeg, they’re offering a unique way to recycle the trees: giving their goats a nutritious meal.
“A lot of people don’t know that goats would always prefer to eat trees over grasses,” said Aynsleigh Kerchak, the farm’s general manager. “They like both of course, but they like trees. And it’s also a natural dewormer for them, so if they eat enough of them, they won’t need to have dewormers in the spring.”
Kerchak says the farm typically receives anywhere from a dozen to 100 Christmas trees after the holidays, with the community encouraged to drop by on Saturdays or Sundays between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. to gift the goats their tree and visit with the animals.
“I just had someone this weekend come by and say: it makes them feel better about getting a real tree because a lot of people are sometimes conflicted,” she said. “This way, you know it’s going to a good cause. And when the trees are all finished being eaten by the goats in the spring, we’ll wood chip them and put them in our gardens.”
Another option for residents looking to recycle Christmas trees is dropping them off at one of the city’s 11 “Let’s Chip In” depots before Jan. 31, 2025 when the city turns into free mulch and wood chips for the public.
“It might sound obvious to remove all of your decorations and lights and even the stands, they’re not good for the chipper,” said Mark Kinsley, the City of Winnipeg’s Superintendent of Waste Diversion.
“If you bring the tree in a bag, we ask that you remove it from the bag, take the bag home, and just put that in your garbage and that just helps the whole program run smoothly,” he said.
Over the past 33 years the city has recycled over 426,000 trees, diverting roughly 2000 tonnes of material from the landfill, saying they want to collect as many Yuletide centrepieces as possible.
“Even if somebody is standing there saying: ‘it’s only one tree.’ No, we want every tree,” he said. “It’s just like all of the other recycling, we want all this material to go into our waste diversion programs so that all of this stuff is staying out of the landfill because every little bit counts.”
