Our new undertaking.... year in review

[Turkey Creek]

About a year ago, after visiting our 2nd different Christmas tree farm in 2 years, and being disappointed in the selection and overall family experience. My fiancé' says, "What do you think about growing Christmas trees?" I said "Sure, why not." Being that both of us are of the GO BIG OR GO HOME mindset, we decided to go all in. Starting with planting 1,100 Christmas trees this past spring..... mostly by ourselves, mostly with a shovel, mostly in muddy ground ....... we had not killed each other after a month! Guess if a couple can live through that they can handle a lot of things! Just in time to do all the fruit tree spring work. We decided that we were going to need a building to sell the trees out of, along with a list of other uses. So we had Morton Buildings construct a 24' x 80' building for us. It was supposed to be finished by the end of June. Which ended up being completed in September. We are doing all the interior work ourselves so we spent a lot of hours in October trying to get as much accomplished as we could. Since it takes 7-8 years for most Christmas trees to reach saleable size we decided we might as well test the waters and start with a 140 pre-cut trees to try and sell this year. We sold over half of them the first weekend and actually made a mid-week run to some friends of ours to get more trees. They have a Christmas tree farm and were unable to open this year due to several of their workers testing positive for Covid right before Thanksgiving. Our older kids and a good family friend made the selling part workable this year, but we will need to bring on some young muscle as we grow in the future. As of a couple of days ago we are sold out for 2020! Amidst dealing with all the Covid crap, our youngest getting diagnosed with type-1 diabetes and the rest of 2020's greatness we are feeling blessed as this year comes to a close. Christmas tree growers are a funny breed in today's world, everyone one we have dealt with has been unbelievably supportive and happy that we are joining their ranks. It is a business that requires a lot of sweat equity, luckily we are still able to supply that.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

Very cool endeavor TC! Merry Christmas to you and yours too!

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

 

[Native Hunter]

I'm impressed! Keep up the good work.

 

[Mortenson]

Looks great! Nice pics! Your trees, especially my new peach trees, are kickin butt this year!

 

[Catscratch]

Congrats! I love the new "shop" (the floor looks great). Glad the new part of the business fits your personalities.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[Chainsaw]

TC, very sorry your youngest has been diagnosed with that awful ailment. Hopefully it can be controlled and better yet that a cure is found.

On the up side of your news, Congratulations on your new adventure. You have a hardworking, fun loving looking crew there. Any thing so close to gardening and habitat work will likely benefit from many of your past experience and vice versa. It will no doubt be a fun business to share with your family and will compliment your fruit tree business nicely. I look forward to following along on your progress and fully expect your new, additional venture to be successful. Planting 1100 trees by hand must have had its moments though!

 

[Turkey Creek]

Congrats! I love the new "shop" (the floor looks great). Glad the new part of the business fits your personalities.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Thank you for the floor comment! It isnt exactly what we had envisioned and as with most things when you do the work yourself you tend to be your own worst critic. We have had lots of compliments on it, so that helps to soothe the mental and physical pain that went with the project! The concrete company sealed the floor when they poured it. We hadnt asked what they would do and we didnt tell them our plans for finishing it. Lets just say after 2 days of running a floor buffer with a diamond pad on it, trying to remove as much sealer as we could, we both said "%$*&^ this!" We acid stained it and sealed it with 3 coats of liquid floor wax. Lets just say its not a project I would do again unless it was on a smaller scale and the concrete wasnt sealed to begin with.

 

[bzb_1]

That is very cool...We just bought 88 acres and put up 4 poultry houses. It is a part time endeavor that you are tied to ooooober full time if that makes sense. The wife and I discussed doing Christmas trees. We currently lease out the tilling on our farm. I am still an active LEO so not quite ready to do it now.

 

[Catscratch]

Lol... that's how it goes sometimes. I would say you made a great recovery!

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

I had the same conversation with my wife this fall after a disappointing time trying to find a good tree also. There is a Christian non profit youth center in town that I am thinking of reaching out to for the sales and labor end of things. Was thinking of placing a second order for trees through the local SWCD office for the Christmas tree seedlings.

 

[Turkey Creek]

TC, very sorry your youngest has been diagnosed with that awful ailment. Hopefully it can be controlled and better yet that a cure is found.

On the up side of your news, Congratulations on your new adventure. You have a hardworking, fun loving looking crew there. Any thing so close to gardening and habitat work will likely benefit from many of your past experience and vice versa. It will no doubt be a fun business to share with your family and will compliment your fruit tree business nicely. I look forward to following along on your progress and fully expect your new, additional venture to be successful. Planting 1100 trees by hand must have had its moments though!

No doubt diabetes sucks! If we had a dollar for every time we said that over the last 8 months we could go on a damn nice trip! Technology (when it works) is an amazing thing though. He has a pump that he wears that dispenses insulin (Omni-pod) and a blood sugar monitor (Dexcom). Which gives us real time data and allows him to give himself the insulin without an injection every time. Diabetes in 2020 is a hell of a lot better than diabetes was 20 years ago, not that it is ever good.

We are hoping by the time we retire, one of the kids will want to take it over and run the whole operation. We are getting smarter and a little more machinery in the shed to make the physical demands a little less, because we arent getting any younger!

 

[Turkey Creek]

That is very cool...We just bought 88 acres and put up 4 poultry houses. It is a part time endeavor that you are tied to ooooober full time if that makes sense. The wife and I discussed doing Christmas trees. We currently lease out the tilling on our farm. I am still an active LEO so not quite ready to do it now.

Oh we definitely understand! I think Tami thought Christmas trees would be more like a month of work, not 10 months of work! Just mowing alone took us a full day this year.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Cool.


What are you growing for trees?? I saw an article the other day that good trees are in super high demand. I'm planting a few frasier and concolor fir this year that I am thinking of swiping for real trees down the road. I already have some cannan fir in the ground that look like they would make excellent trees. Balsam fir, white spruce are probably the most common conifer in my part of the world.


I would urge you to plant some balsam fir, ROD and birch trees. My wife is the decorating type. She makes "winter pots" and sets them on the front steps and stuff. Some of these women will pay $10 for a 4 foot piece of birch 2" in diameter. I could get rich cutting up my woods in 3 foot chunks and selling it for front porch decorations. That shed looks like a good place to have little farmers market and pumpkin patches, etc.

 

[Turkey Creek]

I had the same conversation with my wife this fall after a disappointing time trying to find a good tree also. There is a Christian non profit youth center in town that I am thinking of reaching out to for the sales and labor end of things. Was thinking of placing a second order for trees through the local SWCD office for the Christmas tree seedlings.

Christmas tree farms in our area have been reduced by half in the last 10 years or so. Most of the growers hit retirement age and the Christmas tree farms basically retire with them. Our state has a growers association (which we joined and is a great asset) most of the members refer to us as the "new kids" . We will both hit 50 soon! . A Christmas tree farm is a very long term venture, most people do not have the patience to wait 7-8 years for their first crop. It is a little easier to take the leap when you have green thumbs.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Christmas tree farms in our area have been reduced by half in the last 10 years or so. Most of the growers hit retirement age and the Christmas tree farms basically retire with them. Our state has a growers association (which we joined and is a great asset) most of the members refer to us as the "new kids" . We will both hit 50 soon! . A Christmas tree farm is a very long term venture, most people do not have the patience to wait 7-8 years for their first crop. It is a little easier to take the leap when you have green thumbs.

We have a few areas on the family farms that are just sitting idle doing nothing. May as well fill them up with trees. 7-8 years go buy pretty fast when you aren't relying on the trees to replace the income of land taken out of production. If it doesn't pan out we have a bunch of cover planted and a tree to cut down for whoever wants one in the family or close friends.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Cool.


What are you growing for trees?? I saw an article the other day that good trees are in super high demand. I'm planting a few frasier and concolor fir this year that I am thinking of swiping for real trees down the road. I already have some cannan fir in the ground that look like they would make excellent trees. Balsam fir, white spruce are probably the most common conifer in my part of the world.


I would urge you to plant some balsam fir, ROD and birch trees. My wife is the decorating type. She makes "winter pots" and sets them on the front steps and stuff. Some of these women will pay $10 for a 4 foot piece of birch 2" in diameter. I could get rich cutting up my woods in 3 foot chunks and selling it for front porch decorations. That shed looks like a good place to have little farmers market and pumpkin patches, etc.

We have planted Scotch Pine, Pine, Black Hills Spruce, Colorado Blue Spruce, Southwestern White Pine and Douglas Fir. Fraser doesnt grow in our location, that is the IN DEMAND variety. We will always have to have our Frasers brought in, ours came from Minnesota this year. We are getting a kick out of all the people who act like they are going to open a corner lot to sell Christmas trees next year, since this year was a good year for the sellers nationwide. Good luck in getting a wholesaler to sell you trees! We luckily had an "In" with another local grower who got the ball rolling for us with their wholesaler. Even at that they capped us at a low number of Fraser and required full payment up front for our first order, back last February.

We have other ideas for the building we will start implementing this year. We put together a bunch of Christmas wreaths and a few "porch pots" this year. They were a little tougher sell, they turned out nice but need to find a better way to market them. Most folks who came to buy a tree were basically interested in the trees.

 

[BuckSutherland]

The people that bought Itasca greenhouse (20-25 mins from my land) seemed to have switched away from reforestation and gone towards catering to the Christmas tree industry. They have quite a few trees now that they didnt offer a few short years ago. What is the retail price for an 8' frasier fir tree??? Maybe I need to start looking for a spot to plant a few acres and shipping to you down the road. I enjoy working with trees. They dont talk back, but always let you know what they like.

 

[Turkey Creek]

The people that bought Itasca greenhouse (20-25 mins from my land) seemed to have switched away from reforestation and gone towards catering to the Christmas tree industry. They have quite a few trees now that they didnt offer a few short years ago. What is the retail price for an 8' frasier fir tree??? Maybe I need to start looking for a spot to plant a few acres and shipping to you down the road. I enjoy working with trees. They dont talk back, but always let you know what they like.


View attachment 32964

We paid $42 each for 8' grade #1 Frasers this year. Plus roughly $6/ tree for the delivery. We are obviously new to the game, but I dont see a time in the foreseeable future when there wont be a demand for Fraser. I guess I hadnt mentioned that yet in my posts. Good luck with finding seedlings at this time of year. Most of the well known nurseries were sold of out of the popular seedlings a couple of months ago, well before the Christmas tree sales boom of this year.

 

[j-bird]

When I was a kid we got our tree from a tree farm every year. It was an adventure as the weather didn't always cooperate. Around here a lot of folks use rolling ground that was former animal pasture for X-mas tree farms. We would typically walk the hills looking for the right tree with one of us kids being left behind in a means to call "dibs" on a tree before one was finally selected. Then dad would crawl around on the ground and use a hand saw and cut it down. We then drag it to the path where a wagon and tractor would pick you up and take you up to the barn (best part of the trip if you was a kid). They then shake it, net it and even drill and install a stand if you wanted. Dad was too cheap for most of that stuff but after selecting a few "pretty" trees that was crooked as a politicians spine he finally decided is was worth it. We would get something warm to drink and my folks would chat with the other folks they knew there. As kids we was typically have frozen to death by that point and we just wanted the warmth of the truck and to go home. Tree would go up that same day. Never failed...it was always too tall or too fat (lets just say mom had a type when it came to trees). Dad would put it up and mom and us boys would decorate. I still remember the sticky fingers and the prickly needles.... My kids have allergies and so we don't do the whole "real tree" thing.

I hope things continue to go well for you TC. I have seen the quality of your fruit trees and I can only think that it carries over into the Christmas trees as well. Hopefully you have a a great success on your hands there....looks like your off to a good start.

 

[Bill Loser]

Funny, the wife and I were just talking about doing something like this this morning.
TC, where did you get your seedlings from? I looked a little bit this morning and it seems like prices are all over the board on most of the popular trees. We would probably look at Fraziers and the like. From what im seeing balsams dont grow well in my zone (5a).
How much land did you use to plant your 1100? I have probably 7 to 8 acres i would start with.
We were also thinking about planting some older stock for a faster turn around, but I'm not sold on that being economical.
My plan would be the xmas trees and then a couple acres of pumpkin and gourds, figure why not make a whole season of it.

Great looking place by the way TC!! Hope mine (if it happens) measures up to yours.