BUSINESS: GROWING CHRISTMAS TREES NO HOLIDAY

JACKSON, Mo. -- Teresa Meier picked her way through the hillside of pine trees, ignoring the cold wind swirling around her.

She gazed lovingly at her crop of Christmas trees, tagged and priced and ready to be cut down for holiday shoppers who will begin arriving at her farm near Jackson on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Teresa and her husband, Steve, operate Meier Horse Shoe Pines on their 48-acre farm just off gravel County Road 330.

Sheep and Belgian horses graze on the farm. During the holiday season, a team of Belgian horses pulls a wagon, carrying tree shoppers to the stands of Scotch, Virginia and white pines.

The tree farm is a family affair. The Meiers and their three sons, ages 11 to 18, share the work.

When Steve Meier isn't on the farm, he works as postmaster at Altenburg, Mo. Teresa Meier has a day job, too, working for the University of Missouri Extension office in Jackson.

The Meiers have grown Christmas trees for 18 years. This is their 11th selling season. It takes seven years to grow a seedling to Christmas tree size.

"A tree grows a foot a year at most," said Teresa Meier as she readied her Christmas gift shop at the entrance to the tree farm.

This year, more than 1,000 trees have been tagged and priced. The Meiers typically sell 500 to 600 trees a year.

In all, the Meiers have about 14,000 to 15,000 evergreens growing on their farm.

They plant 1,000 to 1,500 seedlings a year. Some don't survive.

The dry, hot weather this summer was hard on the young trees. Teresa Meier estimated they lost about 50 percent of the seedlings they planted.

The Meiers are one of a handful of Christmas tree farms in this area. Franke's Countryside Landscape Nursery near Jackson sells Scotch and white pines. They also sell balled and burlapped live trees, such as Norway spruce and white pine.

Scotch and white pines also are grown at Leonard Kuehnert's L and J Tannenbaum Farm near Altenburg. "Tannenbaum" is German for Christmas tree.

Growing Christmas trees is hard work, and good Christmas trees involve a lot of manual labor.

Phyllis and David Schwab of rural Jackson operated a Christmas tree farm for more than 20 years before closing it after the 1998 holiday season.

They typically sold 800 to 1,000 trees a year.

Phyllis Schwab said they shut down the business because they no longer had the stamina for the job.

Hot, hard work

There was also a labor problem, particularly in the summer when workers were needed to tend to the trees.

"Young people would rather work in a fast-food place where they have air conditioning," she said.

Schwab said new trees had to be planted each spring. Later, the new and the old trees would have to be sprayed for insects.

Schwab said they also sprayed the trees with a colorant so the trees would look greener at Christmas time. Without a colorant, the trees would look faded by the time they were cut.

"We had a sprayer and several hoses and nozzles," she said. "We would be green as a pea."

In the heat of the summer, the trees had to be sheared with a machete.

"It's work like you have never really experienced," she said. "It is 95 degrees and you are working and sweating. It takes some stamina to be out there."

Schwab said there were plenty of black snakes around too.

Without trimming, the trees won't look like Christmas trees.

"A Scotch pine just does not want to row pretty," Schwab said. "It wants to look wild."

Thanksgiving starts season

Then, there was the selling season when a steady stream of customers visited their farm.

"People started coming out the week of Thanksgiving," she said. "Some would come on Thanksgiving Day, then all hell would break loose." The workload wouldn't lessen until about the week before Christmas.

While it made for a busy holiday season, the Schwabs loved to see delighted customers.

"We do miss the customers, but we don't miss the work," she said.

Joannie Smith doesn't miss the work either. She cultivated trees at River Ridge Christmas Tree Farm near Commerce, Mo., for more than a decade.

She still sells a few homegrown trees, but she no longer maintains them.

"I stopped shearing them probably four years ago," said Smith. "I stopped planting new trees probably six or seven years ago."

Keeping the Scotch and white pines free of disease was a major task, she said. The summertime care for the trees wasn't fun.

"You got all summer long with bug bites all over your legs," said Smith.

These days, Smith's River Ridge business is her Christmas shop, nestled in the wooded area where she at one time tended to Christmas trees.

Kuehnert, the Altenburg Christmas tree farmer, sold his first tree in 1973.

"When I started, I was the only grower in Perry County," he said.

Kuehnert sells about 250 trees a year to people, churches and tree-lot organizations.

While he has a steady job at an area cereal plant, Kuehnert is glad to have the added income from tree sales.

Like other growers, Kuehnert said the general public doesn't realize how much work is involved in growing the holiday trees.

"You think of Christmas trees with snow and Santa Claus and everything," he said. "There is a summer heat involved in raising those things."

At tree lots, the Meier farm and River Ridge, customers can find cut trees shipped in for the season.

The Cape Girardeau Evening Optimist Club sells balsam fir trees from Nova Scotia at its lot at Town Plaza. A typical tree sells for $25 to $35.

Both River Ridge and the Meier farm sell Fraser firs from North Carolina. Steve Meier, who is president of the Missouri Christmas Tree Association, said the fir trees can't be grown in this climate. An averaged-sized fir tree at the Meier farm will cost about $40 to $45 this year.

But the Meiers have started growing Canaan fir trees on their farm. Those firs are better suited to the heat and humidity.

Missouri growers sell about 400,000 Christmas trees a year. That's relatively small, Steve Meier said. By comparison, one West Coast tree farm annually sells about 1 million Christmas trees annually.

The homegrown trees such as the Scotch pine will sell for $3.75 a foot at the Meier farm. A 6-foot Scotch pine will cost around $22; a 10-foot pine, more than $37.

As Teresa Meier sees it, that's a small price to pay for a holiday tradition.

The Meiers enjoy seeing the customers' joy in finding the perfect tree. The delight of children is a special tree, she said, adding:

"Not too many Grinches come this way."

Seeing the forest for the trees

- 35 million real Christmas trees are sold in North America every year.

- About 330,000 of the trees are sold via e-commerce or catalog and shipped by mail order.

- Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states and Canada.

- For every Christmas tree harvested, two to three seedlings are planted in its place the following spring. Last spring, more than 70 million Christmas tree seedlings were planted.

-There are about 1 million acres devoted to Christmas trees. Each acre provides the daily oxygen requirement of 18 people.

- There are about 15,000 Christmas tree growers in North America and more than 100,000 people are employed full or part time in the industry.

- The top Christmas tree-producing states are Oregon, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Washington and Wisconsin.

- The top selling Christmas trees are balsam fir, Douglas fir, Fraser fir, noble fir, Scotch pine, Virginia pine and white pine.

Source: National Christmas Tree Association