By Fred Salo
Have you ever given it a thought? Maybe you live in town and wish to buy a farm. Maybe you own a farm but don’t farm it or maybe your farm has some open land not used, a field or hill side and your tired of mowing it yourself. You think maybe you should plant trees! Especially around November when you see the Trucks on the Thruway heading south to points unknown. And Christmas Tree retail stands popping up everywhere it just seems that it would be a perfect plan for that open space of yours. Probably would help contribute to taxes and might even help with those college expenses and it would be a great family outing every weekend. What a picture!
But that is as far as it goes for most. Christmas is over, your own tree is a bird feeder in the backyard or buried in two feet of snow and life goes on as usual. This thought of growing trees goes away for another year.
Growing trees is an illness.(in my opinion) If a little scratching makes it go away you only have a mild case but if the thought remains you may have Christmas Tree fever. The only known cure I know is to give it a “whorl”. (fir trees are opposite branched)
Then the question is apt to be ( especially by those of us that already grow trees) is “why did I ever start to grow trees?
To each his own on answering this question but here are a few reasons.
First of all the Fir trees grown in Vermont,Balsam especially, are natural to a lot of the State. In other words indigenous to the mountains of Vermont. It must mean stick them in the ground and reap profits 7 years from now. Wrong!
Profits are a lure. 1500 to 3000 per acre with interplanting has to be better than hay that no one wants. In fact if you do the math it does make the acre vary valuable. (But it does tie up the acre for 7 to 15 years.) You probably would find selling that acre difficult to justify. And you could have trouble selling those trees.
Satisfying that green thumb. If planted in the right spot fir trees just grow well. They survive weather extremes, including 3ft of snow,-40 degees to 100 degrees, random abuse and even if planted crooked they grow straight to the sun. In you think you have a black thumb, these little “pups” as I call them will prove that you do in fact have a green thumb. They are amazing. But planting in the wrong spots can mean disaster.
Then there is one more thing. When you plant a tree to adorn the yard or you cut a tree for saw logs you look at trees as ornamental or as one that is mature and should be cut as a cash crop. When you grow a tree for Christmas it takes on a totally different perspective. Grown for one of the holiest of all days of the year it is part of the tradition and becomes a center piece for a family. And even if it is referred to as a “charlie brown” it is so lovingly and is qualified as being such a beautful tree. Best we ever had! It came from that farm up there in the Northeast Kingdom. Compliments make it all worth while. Warning: in this day and age a farm can only have a few charlies.
Just wanting to grow Christmas trees is reason enough but is not as easy as one would think, as future articles under “Abies Sermo”will show. But for those of us that are in the business it takes second place only to family. If you ask a tree farmer about growing trees better be prepared to spend awhile. Early on my Wife and I stopped by to see one of the founding fathers of the plantation grown trees.The Mrs. invited my wife in for tea because she said if your husband is anything like my husband they will be in the field for some time. She was right.
