![]() ![]() Seasonal workers who are paid by the piece can make a 12-inch wreath in less than 5 minutes. Using hand shears, they snip them into sprigs that can be bound together into wreaths or fashioned into centerpieces. They're put through a baler to be wrapped with twine for shipping.Īfter trees are cut, the greens crew follows along, taking every scrap of evergreen left behind. Trees are then sawed down, and mechanically shaken to remove loose needles, loose bark and any debris caught in branches. Instead, they go through fields marking trees that are ready for market. Rex Korson and his crew will plant about 1,000 trees per acre, then nurture them for an average of seven years before cutting them. The Fraser fir earns its popularity in part because it holds its needles for a long time. Or the classic Scotch pine, dark green and capable of supporting heavy ornaments. Some people prefer the pale blue-green, short-needled blue spruce. "That makes it nice for Michigan consumers, because they have lots of choices," Gray said. Michigan grows a dozen on a wholesale level. "Most of the large growing regions, they grow two or three varieties of tree," she said. That diversity of trees is unique to Michigan, Gray said. Others are sold as landscape trees in spring, summer and fall. Seven of them - Fraser fir, balsam fir, Douglas fir, concolor fir, Scotch pine, blue spruce and Black Hills spruce - are sold as Christmas trees. Korson's grows 10 species of evergreen trees. Rex Korson had prepared by earning a marketing degree at Michigan State University while working at his parents' farm and at Tannenbaum Farms in Okemos. ![]() Rex and Jessica Korson bought the farm in 2003. Korson's farm was founded in 1973 by Rex's parents, Wayne and Vicki. "If they have an early, big snow, they can have a hard time getting trees out of the field," Gray said. There are fewer farms than you'd think in the Upper Peninsula. There are Christmas tree farms across Michigan, said Marsha Gray, executive director of the Christmas Tree Association, but there's a concentration of wholesale operations on the west side of the state around Greenville, Lake City and Cadillac. View Gallery: Photos: Christmas trees big business for Michigan farm 1 Oregon cut 6.4 million trees and North Carolina produced nearly 4.3 million. Michigan tree farmers harvested just over 1.7 million trees in 2012, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, making it the third-largest grower in the country. ![]() Only 10 growers plant more than 500 acres of trees, according to the Michigan Christmas Tree Association. They're among 560 Christmas tree growers in Michigan and one of the largest. "We have days that are really hectic, but we have days that are really fun," said Sue Jurado, who was standing at a table in the barn, dipping pine cones in an electric skillet full of hot glue and attaching them to fresh wreaths as fast as she could.īefore the season is out, Korson's will ship up to 50,000 trees and 16,000 wreaths, garlands and centerpieces to volunteer groups, retail lots and garden centers as far away as Colorado and Florida. A fresh evergreen scent permeated the air as workers with sap-stained hands fastened sprigs of spruce or fir onto wire forms from dinner-plate size to 4 feet across. Michigan is the nation's third-biggest producer of wholesale trees (behind Oregon and North Carolina) and crunch time is now as they hustle to get trees onto lots in Michigan and across the Midwest.Īs the workers loaded trucks outside, a wreath assembly line was hopping inside a red-painted pole barn. The centerpiece of holiday decor comes straight from Korson's and other wholesale Christmas tree farms like it. Fourteen trucks filled with trees had gone out the day before. He was in charge of loading and too busy to talk right then. "When you see a tree that looks like that after it's been baled, that's a big tree," said Jessica Korson, who co-owns Korson's Tree Farms with her husband, Rex. It took two men to lift one of the trees, a monster two feet longer and almost twice the circumference of the others. Destinations included Michigan, Indiana, Missouri. 18 picked up trees bundled tightly with twine for shipping and layered them carefully end-to-end on a flatbed semi-trailer.Įach tree was color-coded with spray paint on the cut ends to signify its status in the inventory. 25.Īgainst a gently rolling landscape planted with thousands of Fraser firs, Scotch pines and other varieties of Christmas trees, workers on Nov. SIDNEY - The weather was unseasonably warm at Korson's Tree Farms, but the work at hand was aimed at a perfect Dec. Watch Video: Christmas trees mean big business for Michigan farm ![]()
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