Sure, they’re busy November through December. Then what?
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Faye Beckwith, real estate agent and co-owner of My Freedom Realty in Hannibal and Beckwith Family Christmas Trees in Hannibal, is a busy woman year-round, including at the tree farm which she operates with her husband, Jack. It may seem a seasonal business; however, a Christmas tree farm is plenty of work in each season.
“We’re a relatively small family farm and we work almost 12 months of the year,” Beckwith said.
Just after the busy Christmas season, it’s time to grind the stumps from the harvested trees. If there’s no snow on the ground, that helps. Then she and Jack have to decide what variety and size of saplings they will order to replace those trees and expand the farm.
“You have to order early to get the best selection,” Beckwith said. “We’ve learned the best trees for us are the firs.”
The farm grows balsam fir, Fraser fir, concolor fir, grand fir and Canaan fir.
The fir varieties grow best in the farm’s soil and results in longer lasting needles. They also offer a less pokey tree than blue spruce, for example. Blue spruce require spraying and the Beckwiths try to minimize any use of sprays. The Beckwiths also grow some white pines for making wreaths and arrangements.
In the spring, the Beckwiths prepare the ground and get the new seedlings set, hoping for rain. Once rain comes, it’s mowing season — aka summer. The Beckwiths eschew using herbicides among the trees, meaning Jack mows nearly daily to keep their 30 acres of trees free from underbrush and grasses that would compete with the trees for nutrients and diminish the customer experience during Christmastime.
The weather in Central New York pushes the firs to cone early. This means that farmers like the Beckwiths must manually remove about a few hundred cones off each tree each year.
“They disintegrate, typically at harvest time,” Beckwith said. “When they fall off or break off there’s a needle like projection that is like the core. You can’t harvest them to use like pinecones. They’re soft. Once they start in the spring, you have to take off the cones. There can be thousands.”
The Beckwiths plant new trees among other, larger trees and not in rows, so it appears like a forest. It makes mowing take longer, but the aesthetic is eye-pleasing.
Summertime is also for shearing the trees.
“The trees don’t grow naturally the shape customers prefer,” Beckwith said. “We don’t shear heavily. We shear them so ornaments can hang well on the trees.”
Shearing takes place from the time a tree is five years old until its harvest, around age 10.
In fall, the Beckwiths prepare the ground for the following year’s spring planting as well as make bows for the farm’s wreaths, centerpieces and kissing balls.
“Some people say their wreaths stay intact until Easter when they feel they need to take them down,” Beckwith said. “Balsam fir doesn’t hold up as well for longevity, but it’s beautiful and fragrant. We don’t use that until later in the season.”
Warmer weather means wreaths don’t last as long. Beckwith has about a dozen that she won’t sell because she made them too early and they would not stay fresh looking.
It’s tough keeping wildlife off the farm. Beckwith said that deer damage cost the farm 300 trees in the past two years.
“The season is very intense,” she said. “We do some custom orders and supply some wreaths to other Christmas tree farms, too.”
