Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 20, 1993 TAG: 9312200040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You can still find a Christmas tree, if you can find an old-timer.
Like James Snyder, who started selling trees on Roanoke's Williamson Road long before there was a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store next door - or any buildings at all around.
Sunday, he had plenty of perfectly shaped white pines. His crew cut them off Snyder's place three times that day. Business is up, justifying those 90-degree days Snyder spent last summer shearing trees and cutting weeds to free their lower limbs.
Elsewhere around town, it was needles, string and only the remnants of heavy trade. Tree stands were sold out of stores. A Roanoke Wal-Mart was directing tree-stand customers to the Rose's in Rocky Mount, and yes, they had dozens.
On Brandon Avenue near Towers Mall,two trucks, a trailer, a Bobcat, stray branches and an unclaimed Fraser fir bearing the name "Linda Hall" were on the lot, but no staff or other trees. (Linda, you'd better come and get it. People are desperate.)
Like Steve Finch who, with sons, Eric, 5, and Bryan, 3, was hunting for the white pine his mother had put $16 toward as a deposit on Friday. "I'll take any tree at this point. I've been driving around all afternoon."
Why are so few trees left? Some say folks bought earlier, that they feel less edgy, now that new administration is settled into the White House. Who knows?
Willard Hamill says it's just the way of his business.
Every year, he says, sellers either buy too many or too few trees. He planted his first Christmas tree 30 years ago and the retail ups and downs are as certain as frost. He ought to know. The Northeast Roanoker grows 6,000 trees on nine acres.
Remember that glut last year?
Well, dealers cut way back this year. It's been back and forth like this as long as Hamill can remember.
Next year, because there's a tree shortage now, he bets sellers will overstock, and then we'll have stories about tree lots teeming with unsold trees on Christmas Eve.
Sunday, Hamill still had white pines, several Norway spruce, and a few Fraser firs and Colorado blue spruce at his choose-and-cut farm in Northeast Roanoke. Other tree farms, too, had plenty of trees.
A few things were learned from growers:
\ CHRISTMAS TREE BUYERS ARE FASHION-FICKLE, JUST AS WITH NECKTIES AND WOMEN'S SHOES.
Except it takes years to grow these babies.
Pity the poor tree growers, sitting by their firesides right now, trying to predict what we'll crave in trees come 2003. They must plant the blamed things right away. It takes six to 10 years to grow a good-sized tree.
They just pray that before their trees mature, we don't decide that chopping down forsythia bushes and hauling them inside is a groovier thing to do. Or that we all go back to artificial trees.
There's no telling what we'll want. Five years ago, Roanoke County grower Cyrus Carmack could hardly sell a Scotch pine. Now he's almost out of them.
\ CHRISTMAS TREES HAVE SOCIAL CLASS DIVISIONS LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE.
Rich people go for the expensive, heavy ornaments. So they need a pricey tree with sturdy branches, like a Fraser fir, to hold Aunt Selena's hand-blown glass globes from Germany.
Poorer people choose the cheap, easy-to-grow white pines that proliferate here. Their flimsy branches can't hold the bulky 10-buck boutique baubles, but they couldn't afford those anyway.
Of course, rich, poor and in-between make their own ornaments now. Some are heavy - made of flour paste, ceramics or wood. Scotch pine branches can hold them and don't cost so much either. Nationally, that's the biggest-selling tree, with 36 percent of the market.
\ FRASER FIRS ARE HOTTER, THOUGH.
"It's the Cadillac," says Bob Adams, a Roanoke County tree grower.
"The Fraser will support heavier ornaments and the needle retention is good. It has a good aroma to it," says Hamill.
Thing is, growers say Fraser firs need expensive fertilizer and pesticides. Some think they do well
They must plant the blamed things right away. It takes six to 10 years to grow only at high altitudes. Other say nah, it's the clay in local soils that drowns Fraser roots, so they just buy theirs from North Carolina.
\ CHRISTMAS TREES NOW ARE ACCESSORIZED.
Tree sellers give advice on how to dress a tree.
Like necklaces, earrings, bracelets and fancy belts, tree decorations adorn that solitary green figure standing in the corner of your living room.
Growers like Bob Adams can match trees with trimmings: wafty, fluffy stuff like angel hair for that willowy white pine. Chunky ceramics for the hardy firs.
\ CHOOSE-AND-CUT FARMS ARE GETTING BIGGER.
They've seized a quarter of the tree market, as opposed to about 20 percent five years ago, said Joan Geiger, associate executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association in Milwaukee.
\ NEEDLE RETENTION, AROMA, COLOR, BRANCH STRENGTH, AND UNIFORM GROWTH ON THE SHADE AND SUN SIDES: THAT MAKES A GOOD TREE.
Growers ponder all these things. They hate trees turning yellow. They detest the way some Scotch pines grow thick branches on the sunny side and big holes around back. And doggone it, the Norway spruce needles won't stay long enough. All year long, they fiddle and fuss with these aspects of their trees.
\ LIVE TREES ARE POLITICALLY CORRECT AND LOGISTICALLY HORRIBLE.
Botetourt County grower Chris Blevins does a good business with his B&B trees - balled and burlapped for planting. But you'd better borrow your father-in-law's flatbed if you want one.
Get this: For a 5-foot spruce at Blevins', you'll also haul away its 200-pound ball of roots and dirt. If you really want one, he says, you'd better bring "a strong back and a lot of desire."
by CNB