Reclaiming Abandoned Christmas Trees

[alefland]

Hello everyone! I am in sort of a unique position in that I work for a non-profit that cultivated and sold christmas trees in the past, but hasn't done anything with the trees in a number of years (lots of other projects like farming, firewood production, and educational programs have gotten in the way). We want to revisit our Christmas tree operation and see if it is economically viable, or if it is something we should permanently abandon.

Here is what we have:
--2-3 acres of trees, a variety of different maturities/ages, and a variety of species
--All of the trees are planted in straight rows with space to navigate a tractor through the rows
--None of the trees have been trimmed/sheared in the past 3-4 years, but we have mowed between the rows

We have generally sold our trees as cut-your-own to local residents who are familiar with our organization, but I am not sure how many we sold each year. (Again, this was just sort of dumped on me)

So I guess the big questions are:
1) Can we salvage the trees that are already planted? Or has our neglect ruined the trees?
2) Is as operation of this scale profitable? 2-3 acres seems pretty small, so we are wondering if anyone else has had an operation like this
3) If we were to get back into the business, what type of staffing are we looking at for our scale? One full time employee for the whole year? A part timer during the summer?
4) Our organization tries to make ecologically sound decisions in all of our practices, meaning that most synthetic pesticides or herbicides would be out of the question. What types of organic practices do people know about?
5) What am I missing?

I have tried to read through as many past posts as possible (this one was pretty helpful: https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,62241.msg919128.html#msg919128) but wasn't surprised to find that not many people have been in this situation before  :D

[beenthere]

al
I suspect many Christmas tree growers face the same dilemna, as the trees that don't sell in "cut your own" lot will lead to many older trees that are left to grow.
Your decision may be to either cut those trees down that don't have potential, plant new trees next to the stump, and try to salvage the remaining trees by trimming or shaping them with the idea a customer may take them.

Taking the tops of trees out yourselves to sell may be another option. Finding markets for large trees (Churches, malls, banks, etc.) may be worth the effort as a 20' tree can have a value in the $100's + .

For a 2 acre lot, a full time person would be looking for something to do while waiting for the trees to grow.

Does the 'non-profit' own the land?

[alefland]

Does the 'non-profit' own the land?

We work closely with our town's Conservation Commission to use town conservation land for many of our activities. Our christmas trees are planted on town conservation land, our timber harvesting is done on town conservation land, and our farming is done on town-owned municipal land. We have had a very good relation with the conservation commission in the past, so that is not a very big issue

[alefland]

Here are some photos of the trees I am talking about. You can clearly see that we were trimming them at one point but in recent years we have not been caring from them, and the tops are very thin.
Many of the trees on the property are a lot younger (and more easily salvaged?), a few are older and might be lost for good...

  

  

 

[Fla._Deadheader]

Looks like they already fell over, OR, ya gotcha a neat way to easily trim them babies.  ;D :D :D

[BaldBob]

Other than growing horizontally  ;D, the ones pictured all look salvageable with a couple of years growth after you start shearing them again.

[alefland]

So I did a pretty thorough inventory of our trees and came up with this data.


 

The numbers inside of each wedge corresponds to the number of actual trees we have of that height. Seems like we still have a lot of trees that are still to small to sell, and that we should care for them to protect our initial investment.

[Phorester]

As BaldBob says, I think you're in good position to salvage a lot of these trees.  Usually in this situation you can only work with the small trees because the big ones have gaps in the top 25% of the tree that will never fill in, so they are unsalable.

But spruce such as yours are better salvage candidates.  But I expect you will get a greater percentage out of the younger trees since they still have time to fill in any thin spots before they are tall enough to sell.

We "salvaged sheared" (if there is such a thing) 3 - 4 plantations when we did contract shearing.  We did not shear every tree, as the owners wanted us to do. We sheared only the trees that we felt would make quality Christmas trees. Some of the trees didn't look good until after 2 - 3 years of corrective shearing. We encouraged the owners to cut down the ones we didn't shear.  If left for several years, these older trees will begin to harbor insects and diseases that will infect your crop trees. So they need to be removed.