| NOVEMBER 23, 2010 -- As the sweat pours off Justin Knickerbocker in 90-degree August heat — shears snipping away at one of 15,000 steadily growing jobs — yuletide cheer might seem his least likely companion.
But for Christmas tree growers, ’tis the season all year long.
“Most people think you put them in the ground and wait eight years,” said Knicker bocker, manager of Leavenworth Tree Farm in Cheshire. “It’s a full-time job.”
Christmas trees grow on about 5,000 acres across about 300 farms in Connecticut, selling about 500,000 trees each year, according to the state Department of Agriculture. But local farmers still don’t meet the demand.
Kathy Kogut, executive director of the Connecticut Christmas Tree Growers Association, said big-box stores and lot retailers truck in trees from Canada and Maine.
Many older farmers have sold their properties to developers, and newcomers have quit the business after discovering it isn’t as simple as walking in a winter wonderland.
Most Christmas trees take between seven and 15 years to reach heights suitable for sale. Farmers can plant about 1,000 trees on an acre, and each tree needs to be trimmed at least twice a year before getting chopped down for its designated future holiday. If it survives that long.
Elongated hemlock scale. Nematodes in the soil. Spider mites, white pine weevils, phytophthora root rot, and balsam twig aphids. Kogut said pests and diseases can kill or damage two out of every five Christmas trees.
“If there is a disease running around, it’s contagious,” Kogut said. “Some people don’t treat their trees at all. And as they are all set to harvest in the ninth year, it turns brown and dies.”
Trees can retail for between $15 and $45, depending on the size and market dynamics where they are sold. But farmers must also pay for labor, fertilizers and pesticides.
Every year Kogut sells about 3,000 retail trees out of about 75,000 growing on 90 acres of her family’s farm, Kogut Hemlock Hill in Somers. The family sells about 10,000 wholesale trees from another 100-acre plot. And still they grow tobacco and operate a wholesale nursery. Leavenworth Farm runs a full tree service. Jones Family Farms in Shelton grows 200 acres of Christmas trees, offers berry picking and operates a winery.
“No one can live alone on just Christmas trees,” Kogut said.
“You have to be diversified.”
Farmers offer pumpkin picking and haunted hay rides. They run sawmills and plant nurseries. They offer rides on sleighs and trains and tractors, and sell photos with Santa Claus.
Ron Olsen, a marketing inspection representative with the state Department of Agriculture, remembers 300 people showing up when his father started selling retail Christmas trees on the family’s Voluntown farm about 45 years ago. He was only about 6 years old, earning a penny for each tree he’d haul with his sisters. Now he grows about 11,000 trees there, planting a new one next to each chopped stump.
“It’s one of those things,” Olsen said. “A family tradition. If you’re in it, you’re a part of that tradition.”
Linda Gardner began selling Christmas trees with her husband, Mark, at Litchfield’s Meadowview Farm in 1982. They sell wreaths and offer visitors free hot cider and doughnuts.
The family of four doesn’t advertise, drawing people back through word of mouth or roadside signs. Over the years, they’ve watched customers come alone, then with a spouse, then with babies, and now with grown children. They come to celebrate Christmas and to harvest all that hard work.
“It’s evolved into something that’s just part of our lives,” she said. “It’s a way of life, really.”
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