ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512110030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-23 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY
TO Arthur Cox, the ideal Christmas tree looks like a giant, green ice cream cone turned upside down - a perfect, symmetrical triangle.
"We like cone heads, not dome heads," he explained.
Cox has to be picky - it's his job.
The Floyd County Christmas tree grower has to make sure his firs, spruces and pines - he has 120,000 trees right now - look good enough to catch the eye of the choosiest consumer.
It takes years of care and tedious work to trim, tag and shape hundreds of rows of trees on a regular basis.
Depending on the variety, Christmas trees take seven to 10 years to be ready for harvest. By November, the larger growers harvest up to 8,000 trees in about a month.
"They're bound to love it, or they just wouldn't do it," Cox said.
Christmas trees are big business in the New River Valley. There are about 100 growers in Floyd County alone who generate millions of dollars in business each year, making it the largest producer in the state, according to the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association.
Floyd's high elevations are ideal for growing many of the popular varieties, including Fraser firs, white pine, Scotch pine and Douglas firs.
Most growers in Floyd County sell their trees wholesale throughout Virginia and the East Coast, where their trees eventually end up on retail lots in strip mall parking lots, next to roadways or under the domain of a volunteer organization such as Boy Scouts. The days are long and frenzied from November to mid-December as they rush to get their trees to the public before Christmas.
The trees must be cut, baled and loaded onto trucks for delivery. The mechanical whir of the baling machine, which ties the tree branches together, is almost constant until about the first or second week in December. Growers such as Cox also make garlands and wreaths to sell along with the trees.
Bad weather, tired bones and time crunches are not excuses.
"People don't want to hear that," said Greg Miller, a Christmas tree grower for the last 20 years who just finished harvesting 8,000 trees. "They want their trees."
Floyd County has been a major producer of Christmas trees for decades, growers said, but the business has grown in popularity during the last 10 years.
Miller said a lot of people had a romantic notion about raising Christmas trees, which resulted in a flooded market that eventually dragged down the prices during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
During the last few years, some people abandoned the tree business once they realized the time and money involved (one farmer estimated he spends up to $8,000 a year on his business, which does not include labor). At one time, the Floyd County Tree Growers Association estimated there were 172 growers in the county. Now there are 100.
Prices have started to go up again, though not to the level they were during the 1980s, said Al Thompson, a Floyd County grower and member of the Virginia Tree Growers Association board of directors.
A Fraser fir, for instance, goes for $25 to $60 at a retail lot depending on size and where it's purchased. In 1992, some spruces and pine trees were selling for $10 to $15 on retail lots.
Though prices have improved slightly, Thompson said there is still an oversupply of trees. Also, discount department store chains now are selling large numbers of Christmas trees at low prices.
"Some of the growers have opted to sell and make money on volume ... they'll sell thousands, by the truck loads, and make a little bit on each one," Thompson said. Other farmers have decided not to take advantage of that market, he added. "It's how you want to conduct your business."
Some of the larger growers, such as Miller, focused more on the nursery business once prices started to decline. Dave Gardner, cooperative extension agent in Floyd County, said the shift to more nursery business also began because the public's tastes in Christmas trees changed.
Fraser firs have replaced white pines as the Christmas tree of choice during the last few years, making the white pines more profitable for landscaping, he said. Growers call Fraser firs "the Cadillac of Christmas trees" because the needles are firm, yet soft, making it easier to hang ornaments on the branches.
Bill Larsen, who raises Christmas trees in Riner, said some people believe their decorations will not hang well on the white pine, the former favorite. On a bright green information sheet he hands out to customers, Larsen calls the perception a "scandalous myth!!!'' The front room in his house features a towering white pine, loaded down with ornaments, to prove his point.
"For some reason I don't quite understand, tastes have changed," said Larsen, who runs a choose-and-cut farm. He has not entered the wholesale market because there is too much competition.
During the 20 years Larsen has been growing Christmas trees, he has noticed people want their trees earlier. In recent years, his farm has been packed right after Thanksgiving.
The biggest change in Christmas trees for Larsen is the farm itself. As a boy, Larsen remembers searching the fields of Waynesboro for the perfect tree to cut on his own.
"Fifty years ago, you didn't have farms like these where you deliberately sheared the trees and made them fuller," he said. "You'd cut them in the wild.
"We just developed more sophisticated needs and consumer desires."
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. 1. (no caption) ran on NRV-1. 2. Billby CNBLarsen has been in business since 1970 as owner of the Larsen Tree
Farm in Riner - and he has always used white pines for his own
Christmas trees. In his home, which also serves as the showroom for
his leather-goods business, Larsen loads the tree heavily with
ornaments to demonstrate to customers that a white pine's branches
can handle the weight. 3. Quentin Osborne, a full-time employee at
Floyd County's Indian Creek Nursery, stacks baled white pines on a
truck for shipment to retail lots. 4. Arthur Cox stores finished
wreaths out in the shade of the woods, laying them out on a
north-facing slope covered with pine needles. There they can stay
fresh for a month or longer. 5. Many wholesale tree farms in varying
sizes can be spotted along the roadways as one travels through Floyd
County - one of the two top Christmas tree-producing counties in the
U.S. Here, Fraser firs, Norway spruces and white pines in various
stages of growth cover the 250-arce Cedarhenge Tree Farm on Virginia
8. 6. At Indian Creek Nursery in Floyd County, Mexican migrant
workers Armando de la Cruz (left) and Raul Vela await their next
assignment aboard a truck loaded with replantable concolor firs and
white pines. color.