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28 THE RURAL VOICE
Germany, Italy and South America.
There are quite a few customers
from Kitchener, Stratford, Goderich,
Hanover and Walkerton as well as the
closer areas, he says.
The farm is ,open Fridays,
Saturdays and Sundays starting at the
beginning of December each year.
The biggest weekend is a week before
Christmas when about 60 people a
day arrive. Sometimes there will be
two vanloads of people embark, filled
with one family's grandparents,
parents and children.
Some people like to spend a
couple of hours walking the
bush. "It's a really family fun
time." For others, it's just another
holiday chore that has to be ticked off
and they pick the first tree they see.
To add fun for kids, they often
give a ride on the snowmobile which
hauls the trees out of the plantation
on a venerable skiboose.
"Most people come and are
delighted to pay the $25 or whatever
price we're charging," Mathers said.
Some tell him that a tree on a lot in
the city might cost them $60. Of
course people being people there is
the odd person who has complained
that they shouldn't be charging at all
because after all, the tree "just grew
there".
Those are people who don't know
the work involved in growing a
Christmas tree. First of all there's a
cost of about $1 per seedling in
buying and planting the tree. Then
there's 20 years or so of care. The
Christmas tree plantations are spaced
toallow room between for cutting the
grass, which is done several times a
year on a small tractor. Then there's
the work of shaping the trees to make
them conform to public tastes,
something that won't happen without
human intervention.
The shaping process began with
trimming the leader on each tree to
make it fill out. Later it was time to
trim the side growth on the trees. For
several years this was done by
powering electric hedge trimmers
from a portable generator but this was
a headache as he spent lots of time
fixing electrical cords that got severed
by accident.
Today he uses a light weight (until
you've carried it for a couple of
hours, he says) gas -powered trimmer.
This has reduced the workload from
needing three students plus himself
with the electric trimmers to one
student and himself now. Of course
with each year's sales, there are a few
fewer trees to trim than before.
They trim in July and usually in
the morning when there's dew on the
trees. It's less stressful on the trees,
he says. It would seem like hot work
but actually, he says, it's five to seven
'degrees Fahrenheit cooler in the
plantation than in an open field. Part
of this is from the shade of the trees
on the ground, even though they
aren't high enough to shade the
workers, part from the oxygen being
expelled into the air by the trees.
"You can work on an 85 -degree
day and not be uncomfortable."
They trim trees for the different
expectations of customers. Some
want a narrow tree to put in the
middle of the room. Others like a big,
bushy tree to put in the corner.
One of the lessons learned was
that scotch pine needed to be trimmed
hard to be kept suitable for Christmas
trees. In the first plantation the scotch
pine got out of hand but in the later
plantation they trimmed the trees hard
and the trees have remained saleable
longer.
He's used a lot of students to help
over the years and though there were
a few boys that were good at
trimming, girls have generally been
better at judging how to shape a tree
for Christmas tree use.
Avery few trees have been lost
over the years to diseases like
pine rust. A few succumb to
accidents with the mower. The
biggest danger, however, is ant hills.
"An ant hill will kill a tree faster than
anything else," Mathers says.
Deer, however, are not a problem.
They like to eat the tender growth on
the end of the branches but never
enough to damage the tree — usually
they just help with the trimming, he
says.
Each spring, time is spent going
through the lot to cut stumps down to
ground level since when people cut
their own tree they cut at a level that
is comfortable for them. Without tis
work, people would be tripping over
old stumps come December and grass
cutting would be more difficult (he
cuts about eight acres of grass several
times a year).
It wasn't that long ago that there