The Rural Voice, 2006-12, Page 30PLANTING A CHRISTMAS TRADITION
Serving people who want to keep the tradition of the family outing to cut a
Christmas tree creates a retirement hobby on Wingham-area farm
Story and photo by Keith Roulston
Amold Mathers demonstrates the use of his gas -powered trimmer in shaping
Christmas trees on his Wingham-area farm.
/t's part of the tradition of
Christmas — the annual trip to
the bush with your dad or older
brother to cut the family's tree, and
yet in a world of convenience, one
that is hardly available anymore.
That's what brings families up to 60
miles to Arnold Mather's farm near
Wingham every year to experience
choosing and cutting the family tree.
Mathers' Christmas tree business
came almost by accident, but his love
of trees didn't. He has an interest in
trees that came in his genes, he says,
recalling how his father used to take
logs from the bush an the family
farm a few miles from the farm
where he now grows trees. He helped
26 THE RURAL VOICE
his father plant trees back in 1954
when he was a high school student in
the 4-H Forestry club and again in
another plot a year or two later.
"I've just always had an interest in
trees," he says.
So the farm and trees called him
back, even when he made his career
as a teacher, elementary school
principal and superintendent of
education with the former Huron
County Board of Education and he
bought the farm in 1978. When he
discovered there was a low area
unsuitable for cropping, he brought
in the Ministry of Natural Resources
to plant 25,000 trees.
Later he bought a second farm
across the road and had another
40,000 trees planted. The agreement
with these plantations is that they
must be left to mature, but MNR
technicians suggested that two fire
breaks were needed to break up the
large plantation. He'd be allowed to
harvest the trees in these breaks at a
young age and the idea of Christmas
trees was born.
He had a small five -acre corn field
and decided to plant this for
Christmas tree harvest. In 1980 he
bought 5,000 scotch pine, white
spruce, white pine and balsam fir
trees for this plantation and had them
planted.
In 1983 he decided to plant an
awkward three -acre triangular field
near the house for Christmas trees.
He'd read about trees being grown in
New York State in test tubes and
shipped frozen. He ordered some and
paid students from nearby Turnberry
Central School, who were looking
for ways to raise money for their
class trip, to plant them. The idea
was that all you had to do was poke a
hole in the earth with a broom handle
and put the plug in but the reality, he
said, was that the trees took much
longer to grow than bare root stock
because it took so long for the roots
to break out of their planting hole. It
was the first of many lessons to be
learned.
The fastest growing of the trees
planted were the white pine and
about 14 years after planting, he
began inviting friends and family in
to cut Christmas trees of this variety
— taking 20-25 trees a year. As more
trees grew to a marketable size, he
began advertising. Last year he had
about 300 families come to pick and
cut their own trees.
The scarcity of places where you
can go to cut a tree brings people
from as far away as Kitchener to the
Mathers homestead. One Kitchener
family brought an exchange student
from Germany to experience the
tradition. They've regularly returned
with other exchange students from