Southland Christmas Produce : ‘Choose-and-Cut’ Tree Farms Thrive
While urbanization pushes Southern California’s orange groves ever farther away, an unlikely crop has managed to survive in this semi-desert metropolis: Christmas trees.
The success of Christmas tree farming locally is a tribute to the adaptability of the area’s growers. The Southland is known for its estimated 100 “choose-and-cut” farms, which grow hardy, fast-growing Monterey pines, usually on spare plots along flood channels, beneath power lines and tucked away in other isolated spots.
“It’s land that can’t be used for much of anything else,” said Bud Lyon, whose nine Lyon Christmas Tree Farms are scattered around Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The farms beckon consumers to “choose-and-cut” holiday trees, to pick a pine from among the pylons. Saws are provided.
Highest Sales Here
Although Southern California has only a small share of the more than 1,000 choose-and-cut farms statewide, its farms tend to have the highest sales. Many farms in other parts of the state are not as close to heavily populated areas and do not devote all of their land to Christmas trees.
Even so, choose-and-cut farms will account for about two-thirds of all the trees harvested in the state this year, estimated Lyon, who is president of the 650-member California Christmas Tree Growers, a trade group. Sales by all California growers are expected to exceed $30 million.
Californians are expected to buy more than 4 million trees this season. Most--about 2.5 million--will come from outside the state, mainly from Oregon and Washington, but also from the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, traditionally the nation’s leading producers of cut Christmas trees.
Don McNeil, who heads the National Christmas Tree Assn. in Milwaukee, said every state produces Christmas trees except Hawaii and Alaska. But, he said, no other state gets as much of its business from choose-and-cut farms as California.
McNeil said consumers are increasingly interested in cutting their own trees but that the economics of the business has held down the number of new growers.
High Land Costs
“To make choose-and-cut farming viable, you have to be close to urban areas, where the customers are,” McNeil said. “But by the time you get that close to the people, the land gets so expensive that you can’t afford to grow Christmas trees.”
It took some ingenuity to make the Southland a stronghold of cut-your-own Christmas tree farming, McNeil said. Over the years, growers have helped the Monterey pine, a native of the cooler Central California climate, adjust to the arid conditions prevailing in the Los Angeles Basin through cultivation and selective breeding.
Growers concede that the locally grown trees tend to wilt more quickly--once cut--than the firs, cedars, spruces and redwoods grown at higher elevations and in cooler climates. But, they say, having a freshly cut tree more than makes up for that.
The pioneers of the choose-and-cut business apparently were Howard and Beatrice Nielsen of Santa Cruz County. The Nielsens began opening their tree farm to customers in the 1940s, and the practice spread over the years, according to Sharon M. Burke, executive director of the California Christmas Tree Growers.
Northern Areas of State
Christmas trees are now grown in 52 of the state’s 58 counties. The wholesale growers, who supply cut trees to retailers, are mostly in the northern counties near Oregon, Burke said.
Many of the producers are full-time farmers who grow other crops. Others get into tree farming as a sideline to supplement their income or to provide for their retirement.
Lyon said he accumulated his farms by buying out retirees who were getting out of the business.
“In a few years, I expect to begin selling off mine,” Lyon said.
His farms have the sort of locations that are typical of Southern California’s Christmas tree operations. One borders the Santa Ana Freeway. Another stretches under power lines along the flood channel traversing Valley Boulevard in Rosemead.
Passing On Traditions
Nationally, farmers are expected to sell 32 million cut trees this year and bring in $700 million in revenue. McNeil said that demand for cut trees is growing because of the growing number of affluent families wanting to share Christmas traditions with their young children.
He said prices are flat, however, because of low inflation and competition from artificial trees and among growers.
“Artificial trees are a real concern,” Burke said. “Once you buy one it’s ‘everlasting,’ so you’re not just losing this year’s sale but every future year’s sale, as well.”
To protect its turf and promote the state’s trees, the California Christmas Tree Growers recently started developing their first advertising campaign. The campaign is supposed to go into full swing next year, using a logo depicting a family hauling away a Yule tree against a background of standing trees.
“We have first-class trees grown right here in our state, and we want to let the consumer know about them,” Burke said.
