My favorite sale is every sale, no matter how big or small. This spring I have had orders of 5 tubes and 500,000 tubes. When the phone rings I never know what the call will bring. Sometimes people apologize because their order is small. I always say the same thing: there’s no such thing as a small order. Every project is important. Every single tree is important.
Example: this morning we sold 3 tree tubes and stakes to a customer in the northeast. Yes, 3. And it was my favorite order of the week. Those 3 tree tubes are going on American chestnut seedlings the customer has grown from nuts – specially bred chestnuts that are the resulting of the amazing work of the American Chestnut Foundation to cross the majestic American chestnut with the blight resistant Chinese chestnut, and then back cross with Americans over successive generations to locate those progeny which retain the blight resistance of the Chinese while exhibiting the outward characteristics of the American.
In the early to mid 1900 something like 3.5 billion American chestnut trees were wiped out by a combination of chestnut blight (a fungus unwittingly imported from Asia on Chinese chestnut planting stock) and well-meaning but in retrospect disastrous advice by forestry professionals of the day to salvage log all standing American chestnuts (had those trees been allowed to stand there is a very high likelihood that some would have exhibited resistance to chestnut blight, and hence could have been the building blocks on which future restoration could begin; instead the dedicated staff and members of the American Chestnut Foundation had to start from scratch).
So back to the customer with 3 American chestnut seedlings. Who knows? It might just be possible that one of those trees, out of the millions of chestnuts being planted, exhibit resistance to chestnut blight but are otherwise fully American in their growth. Every single chestnut that is planted turns the odds in our favor; every single chestnut seed or seedling planted matters. Every single one must survive and grow, and so every single one needs a tree tube.
That’s why I’m committed to selling any quantity of tree tubes you might need, from 1 to 1 million. So please don’t apologize for a “small” order. First of all there’s no such thing. Second of all sometimes the smallest orders are the most rewarding.
