HOME GROWN: Not everyone buys Christmas trees...
HOME GROWN: Not everyone buys Christmas trees imported from Oregon--some prefer locally grown. . . . Peltzer Pines--the county’s largest Christmas tree farm business--is winding up with its second-best season in 30 years. So what’s the appeal of “choosing and cutting” your own tree? Says owner Charles Peltzer, whose family has been farming here since 1913: “The experience of walking through acres of growing trees--and they know the tree is totally fresh.”
MOUNTAIN HIGH: You may not know it, but Christmas trees are native to Orange County. Three different conifers--the Coulter pine, knobcone pine and big-cone spruce--grow in the higher reaches of the Santa Ana Mountains. The big-cone spruce resembles a Douglas fir and is the range’s tallest tree. . . . If you think Christmas trees are expensive, consider the fine for cutting one down in a national forest: $5,000.
O TANNENBAUM: German immigrant Henry G. Rosenbaum, above, is credited with cutting and selling the first Christmas trees in California--to miners in San Francisco in 1851 for $6 apiece. He had to explain the then-little-known German custom to many of his customers. . . . He later settled in San Juan Capistrano, where he homesteaded a 450-acre cattle and grain ranch. His great-grandson, Melvin Rosenbaum, owner of a firewood business, lives on the remaining five acres. Rosenbaum, 69, tried his hand at selling Christmas trees 12 years ago, but it interfered with his other business. Besides, he says, “there was too much competition.”
BACK TO NATURE: Air-polluting Christmas tree bonfires are history. And with landfill space at a premium, most Orange County cities now grind post-holiday trees into mulch. . . . The county’s Treecycling Program was the pioneer. “When we started four years ago, none of the cities were doing anything,” says Cymantha Atkinson of the county’s Integrated Waste Management Department. Whatever mulch not taken by people who drop off the trees is used for ground cover and erosion control in county parks.
