Yuletide Cry Is ‘Timber’ at San Gabriel Valley Tree Farms

If it’s not too thin, it’s too fat. And if it’s not too short, it’s too tall.

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder when it comes to shopping for Christmas trees.

Donnie White of Covina was looking for a “natural shape.” But her husband, Chuck, looked straight through the boughs to the spine of each Monterey pine, in search of a straight trunk, “so the tree won’t stand crookedly.” How ever, their son Rik, 17, was willing to overlook almost any shortcoming, as long as the tree was tall enough and full enough.

Finally, after numerous disagreements, the Whites found among the 12,000 available at the Sturrock Christmas Tree Farm in San Dimas a specimen that appealed to all three of them.

“We think it just looks right. It was made for us,” Rik said as he watched an employee mark sold on the family’s 10-foot Christmas tree.

The Whites are among the estimated 2,000 customers who will stake out and reserve Christmas trees this year at the 14-acre farm run by Bob and Lorie Sturrock.

Once the customer has found his “perfect” tree, its tag is marked as sold, and he pays for it. As Christmas approaches, some families return as often as once a week to admire their trees and to “see how they’re doing,” Bob Sturrock said. Finally, two or three weeks before Christmas, they come back to take them home.

The Sturrocks get a jump on the holiday season by opening their farm and taking tree reservations beginning the first weekend in November. But business dosen’t get going for most of the six other growers in the San Gabriel Valley until earlier this month.

Bob Sturrock, who is secretary of the 700-member California Christmas Tree Growers Assn., said this weekend will probably be the busiest of the season for the growers, with families coming to the farms both to select and pick up their trees. Many growers let buyers cut their own trees, but Bob Sturrock said he would rather do it himself.

“We usually cut the trees for the customers. If they really want to cut it themselves, we’ll go with them,” said Sturrock, citing safety and the scarcity of tools as the reason he does not encourage do-it-yourself cutting.

The Sturrocks say they sell an average of 2,000 trees a year, ranging in price from $15 for a four-foot tree to $64 for a towering nine-foot pine.

“This is the fifth year I’ve been here,” said Don Jaeger of Glendora, who had his three daughters in tow when he shopped for his tree in early November.

“It’s somewhat of a compromise,” he said, “but we finally found a tree and the girls got it staked out.”

Bob Sturrock said he has learned a lot about compromise during his 24 years of Christmas tree farming.

“We’ve heard a lot of family quarrels,” Sturrock said. “Little kids start screaming because they don’t like the tree.”

Many who take their Christmas tree shopping seriously say they patronize Christmas tree farms rather than city lots because they think they get healthier, fresher trees at lower prices than those charged for pre-cut trees at lots in the city.

“I used to buy them off the lot, but we just wanted to get a fresh tree. I’d rather cut my own tree so that all the pine needles don’t fall off later,” Jaeger said.

Those who don’t want to travel to San Dimas for a tree can find in-ground trees at four Lyon’s Christmas Tree Farms in Rosemead and the City of Industry, the Grand Avenue Tree Farm in Glendora, Grandpa’s Christmas Tree Farm in Hacienda Heights, the Green and Fresh Christmas Tree Farm in Pasadena, the Holiday Christmas Tree Farm in the City of Industry and the Mt. Baldy Christmas Tree Farm in Claremont.

The Lyon’s, Grand Avenue, Green and Fresh and Holiday farms are within city limits, contrasted with the more rural settings at the Sturrock, Mt. Baldy and Grandpa’s farms.

But Charles Mautz, who owns the Green and Fresh Christmas Tree Farm at Rosemead Boulevard near the Foothill Freeway, attempts to bring a mountain mood to his 4 1/2-acre lot surrounded by concrete and power lines.

Mautz offers camping lanterns to customers who shop at night, making the search for a Christmas tree seem more like an authentic trek into the wilderness. His customers can select from among 1,800 Monterey pines at prices ranging from $19 to $30.

“Most people can’t go out to the woods,” said Mautz, a teacher whose wife, two children and their grandmothers help him run the lot.

“This makes it like people are really going out into the woods to cut down their own tree,” he said.

At Grandpa’s in Hacienda Heights, shoppers browse in a suburban setting on seven acres under Southern California Edison Co. power lines.

There are 7,000 trees available there this year, at prices ranging from $12 to $40.

“They sell for about $4 a foot,” said co-owner Anne Kipers, who added that most of Grandpa’s tallest trees had already been sold.

“We’ve had people from all over this year,” said Kipers, noting that she had helped customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes.

Bob Sturrock said an estimated 450 fresh-tree devotees who got into the Christmas spirit early showed up at his farm in San Dimas the first weekend in November, when the Sturrocks first opened their gates to the public.

“You really have to get here early. It really gets packed and crowded,” said Suzette Pierson of Covina, who said Christmas tree shopping at Sturrock’s has been a tradition in her family for 11 years.

“One year we went on a cruise, and when we came back, every thing was sold out,” said Pierson, who was shopping with her two sons.

Sturrock and his wife, who greet customers decked out in red shirts and matching hats, say serious shoppers will go to almost any lengths to stake out the “perfect” tree.

For several years running, Sturrock said, two elderly women carrying coffee and newspapers have hopped a five-foot fence in chilly pre-dawn hours to get the jump on the opening day crowd. They stake out their tree, then sit down and read the paper while they wait for the sun to come up.

Sturrocks said customers sometimes exchange sharp remarks, demanding that others get away from “their” trees. And some customers have resorted to attempted bribery, offering young workers money to switch tags on which reservations have been noted.

“One woman offered me money to take the sold tag off one tree,” said Tom Cline, 18, who helps the Sturrocks during the Christmas rush.

Before finally choosing their tree, Pat and Pam Hickey of San Dimas asked their two sons, Brian, 12, and Kevin, 8, to stand guard over one tree while they ventured deeper into the heavily wooded Christmas tree farm looking for ever greener pines.

The boys, like other children left to the same fate, played hide-and-seek among the trees, abandoning their post, but marking it with pebbles spelling out their surname, until their parents re turned.

But such tactics sometimes backfire, Sturrock said, recalling that one family with 11 children departed the farm one year minus one youngster who had been left to guard a tree at the far end of the farm. The family returned soon after to pick up the forgotten child.

Cline, who surveys the scene from atop a tall ladder, said he has watched families browse, arguing over trees, for as long as four or five hours.

The Sturrocks began Christmas tree farming in 1961 when Bob Sturrock and a partner, inspired by an article in Sunset magazine about Christmas tree farms, bought their 14-acre spread in San Dimas for $2,000. Sturrock, who works full time as a salesman for Threads USA, said he thought Christmas tree farming would be an interesting way to make some extra money.

“It was something we could do with a small amount of money and a lot of hard work,” Sturrock said. “I’d work 14 hours a day on weekends from daybreak until it got dark.”

The farm, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, overlooks the San Dimas Canyon Golf Course. There is a country mood as customers drive up the narrow, winding road to the farm. The Sturrocks, who have both been married twice, have 12 grown children. The couple lives in a large two-story home that was moved to the farm from Glendora.

Oak trees dot the foothills, and poison oak and roses climb up a steep bluff behind the property. Six acres near the house are planted with 28,500 pine trees, ranging from 1-foot potted seedlings to 12-foot giants. Trees mature enough to sell are tagged and priced; those without tags are either too young to sell or have been selected to become giants in years to come.

Most of the Sturrocks’ customers are residents of the San Gabriel Valley who have shopped for their Christmas trees at the farm for several years.

“Sixty to 65% of our trees our sold to repeat customers,” Sturrock said.

The Sturrocks also have some corporate customers, including May Co., K-mart and Griswald’s hotel, restaurant and shopping complex in Claremont.

Sturrock said the farm brings in $86,000 during the two months a year it is open. But most of that, Lorie Sturrock said, goes to buy seedlings, pruning and shearing tools and insecticide. It costs $250 to $300 a month for the electricity required to run the farm’s irrigation system, she said.

The farm has a 30,000-gallon industrial water tank and uses 5.5 million gallons of water drawn from a well on the property each year.

The trees must also be pruned once a month and sheared every one or two years to maintain a Christmas tree shape, Sturrock said.

To keep costs at a minimum, the Sturrocks and a helper maintain the farm most of the year.

The Sturrocks say the Christmas tree industry involves a lot of hard work--and an element of luck.

“It’s like any kind of farming. You’re at the mercy of the elements,” Bob Sturrock said. “You can have only so much water. You can get bugs. When it’s hot, it burns the trees, and when it’s cold, the trees don’t grow. We’re also affected by the smog. It turns the trees brown.”

Although they lose an estimated 5% of their crop to smog, the Sturrocks consider it only a small problem compared to other natural and man-made disasters.

For example, a flood hit the farm in 1968, inundating two acres and destroying 4,000 immature trees.

“It rained and rained on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday it was just all gone,” Sturrock said. “Everything was washed out, and the land that was there had dropped off 20 feet. We had to start over from scratch.”

Sturrock said he is negotiating to buy another nearby farm and hopes to begin planting there next year. That crop would be ready to sell in 1989.

“This way I’m in competition with myself rather than someone else. It’s a matter of beating out the competition,” Sturrock said.