In
the 1950s pioneers of the Oregon Christmas tree industry like Hal Schudel and
Paul Goodmonson, Bob Stohr, Bob Kintigh, Alvin Hofert and G.R. Kirk brought
Christmas tree harvest out of the forest and onto the farm. Nowadays nearly
all Christmas trees are farm grown still using some of these labor-intensive
methods they developed.
That reliance on human labor has left even the biggest producers of Christmas
trees in the United States in the hands of family run farms. Oregon 
is
the largest producer of Christmas trees in the United States, growing around
25% of the nation’s trees with a crop valued at around $121 million. Still
it is just the state’s seventh largest crop. So Christmas tree farming
is still a relatively small, traditional form of agriculture, with a diverse
production base spanning over 40 states and Canada. Because it is labor intensive
agriculture Christmas tree farming is suitable to smaller acreages, making available
to many private landowners a sustainable and environmentally responsible source
of income from their land.
Christmas trees are a stable and sustainable crop. After two-year-old seedlings
are planted it takes another seven or eight years for Christmas trees to reach
harvestable size. Unlike annual crop agriculture, on land growing Christmas
trees there is an accumulation of carbon in the trunks and roots of the trees
at the rate of about six times per acre, with about one third of that remaining
after harvest as roots in the soil. The trees themselves physically protect
the soil from heavy downpours and provide shelter to wildlife. And the photosynthesis
on an average acre of Christmas trees provides enough oxygen to support at least
three people. And the most important way Christmas tree farms conserve the
land is also naturally one of the simplest. Instead of being plowed, disk and
harrowed every year, Christmas tree farm land is only being worked up after
eight or more years, so opportunities for soil erosion are vastly reduced.
And this long rotation is precisely what adds value to the communities where
these farms are located, providing predictable stable employment.
Christmas tree farming creates a large number and variety of jobs in rural
parts of America where economic success stories are rare. Jobs are created every
step of the way from the local retail Christmas tree lot to the workers harvesting
and shipping those trees. There are crews working in the fields planting, cultivating,
shearing and pruning each tree every year. There is even an entire specialty
involved with the production of millions of Christmas tree seedlings used every
year. But "tooting their own horns" by communicating with the public
about the environmental advantages of Christmas tree farming and the social
benefits of the jobs that are created in their rural communities is a task most
farmers avoided in the past. But growers increasingly are coming to understand
the need to maintain a dialogue with their customers that informs and educates
them about the farming methods being used and the impacts upon the land.
In
2007 four Oregon Christmas tree farms banded together to form the CECG, or the
"Coalition of Environmentally Conscious Growers" www.christmastreecoalition.org.
They had an independent company that certifies sustainable farms inspect their
land and audit their farming practices checking for riparian and wetland management,
soil and water conservation, site selection, nutrient and integrated pest management,
wildlife and plant biodiversity, worker health and hygiene, and consumer education.
This first of its kind certification program for Christmas tree farming represented
a genuine and sincere effort on the part of those farms to provide the public
with an authentic and verifiable way to certify that the real Christmas tree
they are using in their own was grown using sustainable agricultural methods
while at the same time providing stable jobs for a lot of people in rural parts
of America.
More recently the Northwest Christmas tree industry has begun to develop a
similar certification program in conjunction Oregon
State University Extension called SERF or "Socially and Environmentally
Responsible Farm". Physical inspections of the farm and an audit of farm
practices are conducted by the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Most Christmas tree farms in the United States are small independent family owned and operated farms growing trees on 100 acres or less. Some are strictly wholesale but many others operate locally as u-cut operations providing a real working farm for families to go out to select and cut their own Christmas tree. Still others support their farms by setting up retail Christmas tree lots to sell their trees.
The
CECG Coalition's smallest member Santa & Sons Christmas Trees has done just
that for nearly 30 years, supporting their 120 acre Oregon family farm established
in 1983 with a large retail
Christmas tree lot in Los Angeles, CA in the parking lot of Los Angeles
Valley College located in the San Fernando Valley on the corner of Burbank
Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon, providing seasonal employment for students
and local residents. Many a young person has gotten their first job helping
out at an independent Christmas tree lot, and well full-time employment at small
farms make each only account for a few jobs, there are a lot of small tree farms
with close to 15,000 In the US according to the National Christmas Tree Association.
Farming Christmas trees provides rural people throughout the United States and
Canada to sustain a self-reliant lifestyle on small acreages and to be productive
in their own communities.
That kind of traditional mom-and-pop farm has largely disappeared from American agriculture. But that kind of farming never went away with Christmas trees and we are now starting to experience a widespread revival of farmer owned markets. Still the lion’s share of the nation’s Christmas trees are produced by larger farms. But even the biggest producers of Christmas trees in the country are still the hands of family-run operations. One of those farms is CECG coalition member Silver Mountain Christmas Trees located near Sublimity, Oregon. Their farm has been instrumental in the development of several key pieces of equipment, pioneering new low-impact methods site preparation and planting of Christmas tree fields.  The Silver Mountain Nursery produces seedlings for the Christmas tree industry, reforestation and for the farms on Christmas tree fields. This family farm has been continuously operated for over 150 years and now actively farms over 3,600 acres, employee over 70 people year-round and up to 200 seasonal harvest workers.
Once
the trees are planted, each tree must be sheared by hand every year so this
is the biggest task facing Christmas tree growers. On average a worker can shear
perhaps 400 or 500 trees a day, so with over 300 million Christmas trees growing
in North America that is a lot of work. Using methods first developed by Hal
Schudel, workers use long sharp knives and hand clippers, going around each
tree individually to shape the annual growth to attain the desired shape. Shearing
Christmas trees was pioneered by Hal Schudel of Holiday Christmas Tree Farms
of Corvallis, OR. His three sons, David, Steve and John still own and operate
the farm, which is the nation's largest with Christmas trees growing on over
7000 acres around Oregon's Willamette Valley. Throughout the summer, fall and
winter, large crews work in the fields shearing the millions of trees they grow
on over 7,000 acres, creating hundreds of year-round jobs. Greg Rondeau, Holiday’s
sales manager sites peak season employment of over 1000, so there is a very
substantial direct impact to the local economy directly from those jobs and
from the effect on local area vendors, truckers and suppliers effectively recycling
many of those dollars throughout the local community.
Harvesting the Christmas trees is the biggest single job for Christmas tree
farms. For large farms like Yule Tree Farms of Aurora, OR that presents huge
logistical
obstacles on a demanding time schedule. Facing notoriously wet Oregon winter
weather, most of the large farms use helicopters to move the Christmas trees
out of the fields quickly and efficiently in a low-impact manner that avoids
the use of tractors and equipment on wet soils. Joe Sharp, managing partner
for Yule Tree Farms was one of the founding members of the CECG Coalition and
a strong proponent of the movement to establish a certification process to communicate
with the public. Overseeing an operation that ships nearly half a million trees
annually require is a challenging coronation of the field crews that cut the
trees and bundle them for the helicopters with the yard crews that bale the
trees and load the trucks. Freight must be kept moving and customer’s
orders must be filled at a demanding pace. Hiring at this farm peaks in November
and December at nearly 400 and that surge is often filled by crews and staff
from other local area farms that grow different crops that have been harvested
earlier.
Collectively, Christmas tree growers in the State of Oregon provided over $37 million in total wages in 2009. And because this is mostly rural employment, it allows local people to stay in the community providing stability that goes far beyond the direct economic impacts.
On
tree farms big and small, there is a great deal of work involved in growing
Christmas trees and bringing them to market. And all this work is not destructive
to the earth, quite the contrary. And from start to finish these tend to be
labor intensive tasks. Farmland is stabilized by Christmas tree farming and
local environments are improved making it a conservation crop. It is among the
''greenest'' of green industries.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Christmas tree farming is that all of the work is in the service of a truly noble goal, bringing joy to families at the holidays. Those joyful memories of our own childhoods around the Christmas tree helps sustain us throughout our adult lives. When we choose to celebrate Christmas using a real Christmas tree, we keep these same real memories for our own children alive knowing that we are also sustaining green jobs in rural parts of our own country.
Author - Mark Rohlfs is owner of Santa & Sons Christmas Trees www.santasons.com and farms Christmas trees near his home in Philomath Oregon.
National Agricultural Statistics Service ©
Oregon Department of Agriculture - 2007 Census of Agriculture
Accumulation of Carbon by Christmas Trees ©
2010 Gary Chastagner et al Washington State University
Freer Consulting of Seattle, WA
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Sept 16, 2009
National Christmas Tree Association 2009
Read more about Christmas tree farm certification at www.environmentalchristmastrees.com.