Trent Preszler

We need a whole lot of timber, and there aren't enough forests, intact wild forests around the world to supply that demand.

So tree farms have become a huge business, especially in the state of Georgia.

They're the number one state in the country for evergreen seedling production.

The fascinating thing is that Christmas trees are the same species that if you just let them grow, they'll be 100 feet tall and can become lumber.

But they're just raised differently.

So the cultural practices on Christmas tree farms are fine-tuning those trees to make them look good for Christmas.

So that involves quite a few steps, hundreds of steps, in fact, from the moment you plant that tree as a seedling to the moment maybe eight to 10 years later when it gets cut down for a Christmas tree.

They prune them, they shape them a couple times a summer, and by cutting off and shearing the branches, the tree responds by producing even more branches, so an even fuller structure.

Nobody likes a gangly-looking, empty, sparse Christmas tree.

Everyone likes a full tree.

It involves all kinds of tricks of the trade, not just shearing, but also Christmas tree farmers will use almost like a cigar cutter to kind of splice the top leading spire of a Christmas tree, which makes the tree think that, well, maybe I shouldn't be growing taller.

And they invest more energy in their lower branches and then becoming more, you know, a thicker, more beautiful tree.

Oh yeah, it's brutal.

The business model doesn't really work.

Imagine there are very few crops in the world.

Wine is one of them where you have to plant it and then wait many years before you get a crop.

But yeah, you plant seedlings and then, you know, it's going to take eight to ten years to become harvestable size.

So what do you do in the meantime?

Well, most Christmas tree farmers have other sources of income off the farm.

Either they have day jobs somewhere else, or they grow other things like pumpkins or flowers or anything else that you might find at a farm stand in the fall.