The Business of Christmas Trees

[alfreda89]

I remember both cutting down trees and buying pre-cut trees. But we bought from local businesses who offered trees as part of their seasonal service. It was nothing like the industry of today. Huge swathes of Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, and smaller competitors are out there investing in the boom or bust business of tree farms. I remember seeing more than one dead tree farm, especially in Texas. You have to keep watering those baby trees, or they can burn slightly, ruining the tree. You have to harvest them carefully, wrap them so you can get them to their destination intact--and you need to keep the mountain in one piece as you do it. It takes about eight years to grow a Christmas tree.

Trees are now harvested with helicopters and it's a fast, risky business. A tree farm has 35 days, period, to make all the income for their year. Everything else is expense.

Read on and see how the business works.

Comments

[morfin.livejournal.com]

I worked 9 years for the Texas Forest Service, doing data analysis for the reforestation department, and doing work for the Texas Christmas Tree Grower's Assoc. In Texas, the only decent tree that will grow for Christmas trees is Virgina Pine. That's what most of the local farms where you cut your own grow. They usually start getting high enough for a tree at 5 years of age (our plantations in East Texas frequently were missing trees near the roads at age 5 from people driving by and slipping over to cut their own tree from our research plantations).

Something most people don't know: they're all spray painted green, both the ones shipping in from up north, and the ones you cut yourself at commercial farms in Texas. The owners will spray paint living trees to give them a more uniform green color.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Actually, I guessed the paint/pesticide treatment. The last time I put lights on a real tree was when my roommate was keeping an eye on a little one, and I put up her lights. My arms broke out in red pinpricks of irritation from hands to biceps. Never happened before that year. That was maybe 30 years ago....