The capital in a Christmas tree

By BECKY NELSON
Picking up a butt end of a Christmas tree we cut last week, I noticed the rings. Some were almost a quarter inch wide … must have been a wet year with perfect growing conditions. Others were quite narrow … one of those dry years we sometimes suffer. There were 10 distinct rings in the wafer, so the tree was 10 years old, or older if I missed a ring. It may seem odd to still be talking about Christmas trees as we enter a new year, but this is the time that growers start planning for replanting and scheduling for spring and summer pruning of next season’s crop.

We had sent to us a negative post on social media about cutting Christmas trees, calling it wasteful. I felt compelled to respond, telling the person that Christmas trees are not wild trees, but rather a crop planted like carrot or beans. Unlike our annual crops, trees take a lot of care for many years to make sure it is available for harvest for a Christmas season a decade away from planting. Plantations are usually planted on soils not suitable for other crop production, managed from forests already carrying the trees naturally, tucked in places on farms that would otherwise not be working lands, or as a crop to transition a farm from one crop to another to perpetuate working lands and keep them from development.

Suitable soils need to be prepared for a Christmas tree plantation. Rows need to be plotted and seedlings purchased. After planting, the small trees need to be protected from deer, who love the tender branches for snacking. All along the growth cycle, the trees need to be monitored for all manner of diseases and insects that attack fir trees. Then comes the pruning for the tree to take the desired shape that customers look for in the tree purchase season. 

If one were to truly track the cost of producing a Christmas tree, the cost would far outweigh the price asked at the retail stand or the wholesale truckload. At even 15 minutes per year for 10 years, the 2.5 hours spent on that tree would cost about $40 if a worker is paid a decent wage, even before someone was paid to cut, bale, load, transport and then unload and tend the tree on a tree sales lot. Even if workers are paid the current minimum wage in our state, the cost of that tree is well over $20 before harvest, not a very profitable venture for the farmer or plantation owner.

Christmas trees are grown by many farmers as a supplemental crop to round out sales for the year. They are also grown on large plantations by others with it as the sole or a significant portion of annual income. The planning to keep successive crops growing and healthy is tremendous, and the land tied up in the growing is significant. The $40 cost I mentioned doesn’t even consider taxes on the land, equipment needed to tend the trees or any other overhead costs involved to keep the tree healthy.

Yet, at the end of the production, whomever buys the tree has a beautiful decoration to grace their home through their holiday celebrations and the tree farmer has a few dollars to try to keep their operation solvent and pay their own bills. It takes a lot of work and money to create a suitable crop of Christmas trees, just as it does for a suitable crop of anything. When you take your tree out of your home this year, think of the work and care that went into growing that example of natural beauty. Think of those that grew it for you and how those folks are keeping open lands open and undeveloped and caring for our precious corner of the earth.

We just received our first seed catalogs of the season. Time to put the Christmas tree sales behind us and turn that planning, care and nurture to other crops … and next year’s trees. Happy New Year, everyone.

 

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport. Contact her at [email protected].