Choosing the perfect farm fresh Christmas tree

A farm fresh Christmas tree, grown with care and expertise at a New Hampshire Christmas tree farm is the perfect start to your holiday decorating. With Christmas tree season now upon us, we offer the following tips for choosing YOUR perfect tree:

* First, make sure you know how tall and how wide you want your Christmas tree to be before you visit your favorite New Hampshire Christmas tree farm. It’s often hard to picture the room you’ll place your Christmas tree when you’re in a field surrounded by beautiful firs.

* Once you’re at the farm – either in the field or at the retail lot – make sure you measure your selected tree to ensure it is the size you want! (This may sound simple, but many a tree trimmer has had to lop off a chunk of tree top to make a Christmas tree fit in the living room!)

* New Hampshire Christmas tree farmers grow a variety of tree types, from the most common Balsam and Fraser firs to the more unusual Korean and Canaan firs and other species. Different types of trees have different qualities, so check with the staff at the Christmas tree farm, or visit the National Christmas Tree Association website http://www.christmastree.org/types.cfm before you go, to find out which tree type is best for you.

* Let the whole family join in the fun of choosing the perfect tree! Many New Hampshire Christmas tree farms offer refreshments, gift shops, and other activities on the farm, so you can create a day of family fun around bringing your tree home.

You can find more ideas from New Hampshire Christmas tree growers at our website, where we have more tree selection tips and a tree care page with tips for keeping your Christmas tree fresh through the season.

Happy Holidays!

Meet Dana Blais of Hidden Meadows Tree Farm in Bath

Dana and Jane Blais have been growing Christmas trees at Hidden Meadows Tree Farm in Bath since 1988. Over the past two decades, the Blaises have evolved from what Dana describes as “dabbling” in growing Christmas trees into a full-time business. Here’s what Dana had to say about his work when we caught up with him in November.

How did you get into Christmas tree farming?

“I more or less started around 1985. I’m trained as a forester, and at the time I was a county forester in Coos County. There’s quite a few Christmas tree growers in that area, and I just became interested in it. So I started to dabble in it a little bit. I like the land. I like farming. One thing led to another, and now I’m basically in it full time. It’s good work. I enjoy it. I still do some forestry work, but not a whole lot.”

How did you end up in Bath?

“My wife, Jane. She just happened to have some property here when I met her. I had my Christmas trees growing in several other locations, and this property is well suited to growing Christmas trees. So, we started growing trees here also.”

Do you still have trees in other places, too?

“Actually, now I don’t. I did buy land in Lancaster this spring, and I will begin to plant [there] in the spring of 2010.”

What is the size of your farm?

“Three hundred total acres, about 40 acres in trees. We are expanding. We have about 35,000 trees here now, and I think it’ll be another 10,000 or so. And I’ll be able to plant about 15,000 in Lancaster.”

What types of trees to you grow?

“Fraser, balsam and Canaan firs. I’ve dabbled in a few so-called exotics, and I continue to do that, but those three are the basics. I’m trying Korean fir now, and I think that has some promise.”

How many trees do you sell each season?

“Right now we sell an average of about 4,000 per year. We are open for choose-and-cut. We also sell into the wholesale market – Rotary clubs, fire departments. Jane and our daughter, Heather, also make beautiful wreaths, which we sell here.”

What is your favorite part of growing Christmas trees?

“I like all of it. I do like to put trees in the ground, to plant them. But I like the whole process.”

What is your least favorite part of growing Christmas trees?

“Dealing with diseases and insects. Sometimes it’s very difficult to control. The summers of 2007 and 2008, we had a tremendous amount of precipitation, which led to a big increase in a certain root disease. We’ve started putting in some subsurface drainage. Since Fraser is the most susceptible, I’m planting balsams and Canaans in some of those places.”

What do you like to do when you’re not working?

“I like to hike. I like it here in the mountains. And I hope the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl.”

Meet Gordon Page Of High Meadow Farm

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul

Gordon and Carolyn Page grow Christmas trees on about 4½ acres on their Strafford property. With 10 acres in current use, including the Christmas trees, the other space is occupied by large vegetable and flower gardens and several fruit trees.

“We’re situated at the edge of the Blue Hills area. We’re up at an elevation of 860-plus feet,” Gordon says. “We’re kind of a microclimate.”

Gordon, a civil engineer who retired 16 years ago from the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, and Carolyn, a retired educator, got into Christmas tree farming as “a retirement project.” They planted their first trees in 1989 and have been selling trees since the mid-1990s.
They harvest about 400 cut-your-own Christmas trees each year.

We caught up with Gordon June 5 to talk about his retirement project. Here’s some of what he had to say:

Where did you get the idea to start a Christmas tree farm?
My wife has sister-in-law in New Jersey that did it, and we had this land. About 3 acres was in woods. The rest was a former pasture for a horse farm. It’s real flat. The land wasn’t being used for anything, so I thought this would be a fun project.
What kinds of trees do you grow?
I’ve planted quite a few varieties: Fraser fir and balsam, Canaan fir (a balsam that’s native to West Virginia). I’ve got 650 Korean firs now.
How do you decide what kinds of trees to plant?
I’ve had problems the last couple years with root rot with Fraser firs. That’s why the last couple of years I’ve switched to the Canaans and the Korean firs, which are supposed to be resistant. I have a real heavy soil here, and the Canaans do well in heavy soil.
How did you learn about tree farming?
I became active in the marketing committee for the New Hampshire-Vermont Christmas Tree Association. And I picked everybody’s brains every time I’d go to a meeting. I actually made quite a few mistakes in the beginning. The first trees I planted were white spruce, which I found out most people don’t like. I planted about 1,000 of those. Then I planted Scotch pine, which people also don’t like. I finally got to balsam and Fraser firs. We’ve put up an electric fence – the first 500 balsams I planted, the deer devastated them.
Do you have a hired staff?
It’s mainly my wife and me. The last two years we had a friend from Sacramento, California, fly out to help us. He thinks it’s great to be in the tree business at Christmas time. Generally we have one teenager helping us during the selling season.
When does your busy selling season start?
People start coming to tag trees Columbus Day weekend. We start selling Thanksgiving weekend. Carolyn makes a couple hundred wreaths and decorates them to sell. She starts about November 1st making wreaths. You’re supposed to wait until after the second frost to start cutting brush.
Have you been happy in your retirement project?
Yeah. It’s small enough so that if I want to take off and go fishing or something I can do it. There’s nothing to do in January, February and March. It’s about mid-April when you get busy. Last year we went to New Zealand for three weeks in January. We’ve done a lot of shorter trips in the summer.
What’s your favorite part about raising Christmas trees?
I like to be outdoors. That’s one of the reasons I took up civil engineering, but I found myself in an office most of the time. Seeing the people each year. Most of our customers are pretty loyal, they keep coming back. And seeing their kids grow up.
What is something that you don’t enjoy as much?
All the mowing. I try to keep the grass mowed between the trees. That keeps me busy in the summer. There’s the shearing in the spring. But I don’t really mind those things.
What is something the average Christmas tree buyer might not realize about growing trees?
I suppose that they don’t think about that the trees are giving off oxygen. And they preserve the land, which is very important, especially in southern New Hampshire.
What do you do besides raise Christmas trees?
I hunt. Both of us are involved in the Bear-Paw Regional Greenways (a regional land trust). It started out trying to get a greenway between Bear Brook State Park and Pawtuckaway State Park. They’re active in Rockingham and Strafford counties. And I’ve climbed the 100 highest peaks in New England. I’ve climbed New Hampshire’s 48 4,000-footers in winter. Carolyn’s climbed all the New England 4,000-footers. That was in our younger years. We still hike, but we’re not that serious anymore.