Last Stand at the Sturrock Christmas Tree Farm

WHEN BOB STURROCK AND HIS PARTNER LEASED THE SMALL PLOT of land in La Verne 39 years ago, orange groves topped the bluff at the back of the place and river-bottom land in front stretched untouched to the San Gabriels.

The terms of the lease surely were right; the lessees had to pay only the taxes on the property, which came to $50 a year. Planting a cut-your-own Christmas tree farm there seemed a suitable sideline venture for a couple of young men short on money but long on appetite for work. Soon they bought the land outright.

By late November 1965, they had 2,000 fast-growing Monterey pines ready for the axes of people who wished to reenact a snowy German tradition in the sun and dust of Southern California.

A short time later, Sturrock bought out his partner. The farm grew to 15 acres and bristled with 12,000 Monterey pines. For a quarter-century it either broke even or produced extra cash for its owner, who worked full time as a warehouse manager and, later, as a sales representative.

But in the early 1990s, business nose-dived. Pre-cut trees from Oregon and Washington flooded the lots of local Target and Home Depot stores, which could sell the imported noble and Douglas firs more cheaply than Bob Sturrock could his Montereys.

“The family tradition just started to crumble,” he says. “We lost a lot of people who’d come out every year, and afterwards their kids didn’t have the habit.”

From 2,000 trees a year, the farm’s sales sagged to a low of 600. (Sturrock expects to sell about 700 this year, a typical 8-footer going for $55, including tax.)

Many other farmers gave up, pulling out trees or letting them go untended. Membership in the California Christmas Tree Growers Assn. dropped by more than two-thirds, to 250.

Still, as it will, the business cycle cycled. The lost production has created something of a Christmas tree shortage, and now prices of imported trees are higher than ever. As a result, farmers in Northern California “are planting like crazy,” says Nancy Roatcap, owner of Nancy’s Ranch tree farm in Santa Clarita.

That’s not the case, however, in Southern California, where land costs have risen wildly and water is much dearer. According to the state’s Growers Assn. executive director, Sam Mintur, it can cost 40 times as much to put down 12 inches of water on an acre of land here as it does in Modesto.

Last year, the California Native Plant Society proposed to state authorities that California’s three native stands of Monterey pines be designated “threatened.” This set off fears, since allayed, that growers would be prohibited from harvesting their commercially produced Montereys.

Monterey pines account for about a third of the 700,000 Christmas trees California produces, and perhaps a 16th of the 4 million trees sold here. They are about the only Christmas-suitable trees that can withstand the warmth and dryness of Southern California. In many ways they are aptly symbolic of life down here.

For one thing, they grow explosively, reaching 8 feet in four years. Other Christmas trees require seven to 15 years.

For another, they have a uniquely dependent relationship with water. Once felled, Montereys must be kept in water “like fresh-cut flowers,” Sturrock says, or they’ll wilt. By comparison, the corpses of Douglas and noble firs remain presentable for weeks, which is why they can be sold on retail lots. Montereys, meanwhile, are found exclusively on choose-and-cut farms.

Monterey pines are especially beautiful and fragrant when well tended. Yet they must be pruned every couple of months and regularly sheared to become bushy and “Christmas tree shaped.” Left to their own devices, they grow tall and spindly and have large bare areas; they’re perfectly suitable to their environments but incompatible with our preconceived notions. In other words, their beauty as Christmas trees is not natural.

Now, at 72, Bob Sturrock has had enough of Monterey pines--the twice-monthly, six-day irrigations, each withdrawing 45,000 gallons of water from his well; the $700 monthly electric bills for running the well pump; the endless war against the Nantucket pine-tip moth; the constant pruning and shearing; the impossibility of being away from the farm for any considerable time.

This is Sturrock Christmas Tree Farm’s last Christmas. In two weeks, it will be history. The bluff on which orange groves once stood has grown a subdivision, the river bottom running to the foothills of the San Gabriels has become a golf course, and the farm is in escrow to Grace Church of La Verne, which plans to erect a chapel, a school and an amphitheater on the land.

When the sale is complete, Sturrock and his wife, Lorie, will be free to travel the world. Despite the Scroogeyness of business cycles and operating expenses, the great Santa of the Southland, merrily escalating land value, has been at work. On selling, Sturrock will receive 20 times what he paid for the farm, which should make for a plenty joyous Christmas, not to mention a pleasant retirement.

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James Ricci’s e-mail address is james.ricci@latimes.com