For most families, keeping a Christmas tree alive requires maybe a monthlong commitment.
For the people who grow them, it’s a yearround job.
“You work on a tree farm all year long, whether you’re big or small,” says Dr. Brent Campbell, whose family owns and operates Campbell’s Christmas Tree Farm in Harrison, Tennessee.
His is one of a handful of choose-and-cut Christmas tree farms in the region around Chattanooga, a swath stretching from Sweetwater, Tennessee, to Pisgah, Alabama, to LaFayette, Georgia. With about 600 trees in various stages of growth, Campbell’s is one of the smallest farms – trees on some area farms number in the thousands. But even if the workload is comparatively lighter, the list of chores is long.
“You’re doing a lot of mowing during the summer, applying fungicide and insecticide,” Campbell says. “You prune a couple of times during the summer. When you start getting ready for the selling season, you might be blowing off leaves, getting lights set up for decorating.”