X-mas tree farming It's really cheap to do!!

[gordon21]

X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

I have recently learned just how inexpensive it is to get a personal size small x-mas tree farm started. Frazier fir transplants run about a $1 each. You can easily plant 250 trees on one acre and leave space for roads between every 3rd or 4th row for the tractor. Push a shovel into the ground, rock it back and forth to make a V. Put the 15-18" tree into the V and tamp the V closed with your foot. Repeat 249 more times. Keep them watered and the real work begins in 3-4 years when you have to start shaping them. I may be off base, but it seems as though an initial $250 investment would yield more trees than you or your friends and family could ever use. 6-9 years later everyone can have a huge tree at no cost. Of course to keep the sizes flowing, you would want to plant another 50 every year to insure a steady supply down the road. Assuming crop loss due to numerous reasons, a start with 250 seems fair. Trees don't need flat or tilled land.
Perfect rows are not important. The rows can follow the land you have. What do you guys think?

 

[MossRoad]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

Weed control = spraying or mowing.
Water = irrigation in drought.
Pest control, both insect and furry = insecticides and shotguns(or traps, or repellants, etc...).
Disease control = spraying, ground cover management, etc...
Trimming labor = cost per tree per year.
X 7-8 years before tree is harvestable. More years if you want larger trees. Plant some seedlings, one year old and two year old trees to get a three year head start.

It isn't as cheap as it sounds, but can still be a good business if done correctly. If just doing it for family and friends, it could be fun. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Also, everyone doesn't want a fir tree and planting more varieties makes you less vulnerable to being wiped out by a tree disease or insect infestation. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

We looked into it a few years back and decided not to go into it at that time. There are a few folks here on TBN that do it. Hopefully they will chime in.

 

[Doc_Bob]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Weed control = spraying or mowing.
Water = irrigation in drought.
Pest control, both insect and furry = insecticides and shotguns(or traps, or repellants, etc...).
Disease control = spraying, ground cover management, etc...
Trimming labor = cost per tree per year.
X 7-8 years before tree is harvestable. More years if you want larger trees. Plant some seedlings, one year old and two year old trees to get a three year head start.

It isn't as cheap as it sounds, but can still be a good business if done correctly. If just doing it for family and friends, it could be fun. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Also, everyone doesn't want a fir tree and planting more varieties makes you less vulnerable to being wiped out by a tree disease or insect infestation. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

We looked into it a few years back and decided not to go into it at that time. There are a few folks here on TBN that do it. Hopefully they will chime in. )</font>

Sounds like a great business!!! I would love to do the same thing on my 10 acres. Any tax advice? Can it be acceptable for tax purposes? Any pitfalls? I sure appreciate any advice that you might have to offer.
Bob

 

[dknarnd]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

My brothers and I did this and we had good trees for all the family and many friends for several years. Then needle cast disease got into our field and we were lucky to get three trees out this past year. Now we have to cut them down and burn them.

The trimming isn't to bad but you have to be ready to spray at the right times of the year and always checking for insects or other disease that may require care.

 

[gordon21]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

Bugs?? Disease?? You guys are starting to take the fun out of this project. I will still do it though. It was never meant to be a business or to sell to the public. But after listening to all the things that could happen, I'll be in good shape to start with 250 treees if I want 20 per year harvest starting in year 5-6. I knew about the trimming, but I am not really surprised that there will be a bunch of diseases to control. I scanned the new TSC catalog and saw all the various livestock drugs. TSC has drugs for a ton of ailments I have heard of and and many more for things I never heard of. After seeing all the things a horse or dairy framer has to prevent, it is truly amazing that a farm can raise hundreds or thousands of healthy animals.

 

[MossRoad]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

Be sure to check with your local county extension agent, too. There are many programs that you can get help with for free. They can tell you what types of trees do best in your soil conditions, what types of diseases and pests to whatch out for, etc.... there may also be programs to take land out of farm production, soil errision control and reforestation that may help pay for part or all of your trees. It is worth checking in to. Better do it soon as spring is fast approaching and that is the start of planting season. Or, you could plan a little longer and plant trees next spring. Good luck. Sounds like a great project. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[JoeinTX]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

I'm certainly not trying to be a downer, but I remember hearing back around Christmas time how hard of a time tree farmers were having. It seems that more people are buying fake trees, rather than real trees, and the growers are going out of business due to lower sales than in the past.

May be neither here nor there, but I thought I'd mention it.

Best of luck if you decide to do it, however.

 

[valleydweller1]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

In my neck of the woods it's mostly done on smaller acreages for tax purposes. You can plant trees and schedule the harvest for 30 years in the future. During that 30 years you don't have to pay property taxes (ag deferral) and get to deduct tractors and tools used for "maintaining" your farm.

 

[crazymike]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I'm certainly not trying to be a downer, but I remember hearing back around Christmas time how hard of a time tree farmers were having. It seems that more people are buying fake trees, rather than real trees, and the growers are going out of business due to lower sales than in the past.

May be neither here nor there, but I thought I'd mention it.

Best of luck if you decide to do it, however. )</font>

I guess it depends where it is. Around here the big tree outfit makes regular donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars to charities, etc... so they must be doing something right.

 

[Doc_Bob]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( In my neck of the woods it's mostly done on smaller acreages for tax purposes. You can plant trees and schedule the harvest for 30 years in the future. During that 30 years you don't have to pay property taxes (ag deferral) and get to deduct tractors and tools used for "maintaining" your farm.
)</font>

Anyone at TBN doing this? I would to know where I can start to learn about this idea. Any help greatly appreciated.
Bob

 

[rdln]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

http://www.tractorbynet.com/photos/showphoto.php/photo/2617/sort/1/size/medium/cat/500/page/1

we've been cutting trees i planted for the last five years

You might be able to tell but after I planted them, I didnt do a darn thing to them.

the arent all xmas tree material but I wont be disappointed when those bad ones are 80 feet tall.

 

[mathey]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

there are a few of us on here that have small to medium sized Christmas tree farms...Moss pretty much nailed it, it ain't as cheap as it seems...

 

[Gatorboy]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

I hope you have a good high fence around your trees, otherwise you've just planted 250 deer appetizers.

 

[bloody_peasant]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

Hi, first time poster, I grew up on a Christmas tree farm, had around 6 acres of the @%@#%#@ trees with about 1,000 trees per acre, did both scotch and white pine. (6' rows with 6' between trees staggered).

In open fields in Kentucky never had problems with deer or pest other than weeds (and hornets building nests in them /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif). We never irrigated them either, but your growing seasons vary then quite a bit. Dry growing seasons give you very little growth, but with very wet ones you sometimes get two sets of growth (aka double the pruning /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif) Pine trees are like weeds and are very drought tolerant and we never fertilized them after the first year. Just depends on how much you want them to grow.

We used a walk behind gravely and a weed eater and hand trimming to keep weeds down. Then we also pruned by hand. A lot of labor, a lot, but we had some of the best looking trees around. If you want really nice trees you really have to start pruning them after each growing season before the new growth turns all woody.

Planting wasn't bad, but for easy mowing straight rows with even spacing are important if you are doing any substantial number of trees. Even an acre of poorly lined up trees is a pain to mow around as you weave in and out around them instead of shooting down a straight row. Trust me, we got real good on lining up rows after our first acre /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Pruning and weed control are big time labor chores especially until the trees get big enough to keep the weeds down themselves. Although I'm sure if you have the $$ you can get nice equipment to speed that up, we did all of our work by hand. At first weed control is hard and pruning is easy (just top them is all). After they get big weed control is easy but pruning is hard.

All of our tree fields are now hay and we never really turned a profit on them. but they sure were pretty fields and made a great place to play paintball /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[gordon21]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

Bloody peasant: You were going so good with advice and thank you for that. Then, you mentioned paintballs and my poor heart stopped. The thought of my babies being covered with bright paint scared me. I came up with this project with the intention of it merely providing my family and friends with trees. I think the correct phrase would be "hobby farm". If I start a big one acre project like this and spend only $1000 on it over the first 3-4 years, then that is $5 per week. That is less than the cost of a six pack. From reading hundreds of posts by you guys, I am sure your wives would be thrilled if your projects only cost $5 per week. However, stay tuned for one more announcement on my tree farm later this week.

 

[RonR]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

I'm wondering if you used a tree planter machine, one that laid down a sheet of protective barrier, would assist in the weed control issues later on.

If you aren't familiar with these, it's a one pass machine (after the ground is worked up well). It cuts a furrow on each end, unrolls about a six foot wide weed barrier, punches a hole in the material for a tree, which the rider manually inserts, then the rear of the machine moves dirt back on top of the edges of the material to hold it down. If you search online, you can see pics and descriptions of these. I'm not saying they are perfect--our farm had some trees on it and the wind ended up catching an edge of the material six months later and ripped out a slug of the material, but overall, it kept the weeds down until the trees were established.

This could work on the initial planting, but if you back plant for each tree cut, that's a manual operation!

ron

 

[bloody_peasant]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Bloody peasant: You were going so good with advice and thank you for that. Then, you mentioned paintballs and my poor heart stopped. The thought of my babies being covered with bright paint scared me. I came up with this project with the intention of it merely providing my family and friends with trees. I think the correct phrase would be "hobby farm". If I start a big one acre project like this and spend only $1000 on it over the first 3-4 years, then that is $5 per week. That is less than the cost of a six pack. From reading hundreds of posts by you guys, I am sure your wives would be thrilled if your projects only cost $5 per week. However, stay tuned for one more announcement on my tree farm later this week. )</font>

LOL, Don't worry gordon the paint washes off and is very water soluable /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif But if you used a more permenant white paint you could get your frosting done for free if you are into that kinda thing /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

I don't know but maybe you have a lot of friends and family, but it seems like an acre would be a lot. Figure if you staggered them planting 1/8th of that per year so you end up with a continuous supply that's still up to 125 trees a year.

As for price assuming you already have mowers and other equipment (at a minimum a good weed eater) you are probably right on. Just don't go telling my wife about your $5 / week projects or I'll lose all my funding /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I would also recommend buying at least 2 year old seedlings, we did the one year olds our first year and they didn't do as well getting established and had to replant a lot.

For planting we did the following:
1. We setup these fancy rigs that were basically mobile batter boards. They set on the row end stakes and were kind of self centering and self positioning over the stake.
2. Marked a length of builder's string every 6' from start to end and used that same string for each row.
3. Laid out and made sure our corners were square with each other. and carefully laid out our end row stakes. All of this was to make sure our rows were straight and our trees evenly spaced for easy mowing.
4. We used a dibble bar instead of a shovel. Google for it and you can find examples of them. Basically you stomp it into the ground, wiggle it back and forth, insert the tree to the proper depth, then stomp the dibble bar into the ground about 3" or so behind the first hole and wiggle it back and forth again. (With 2 people its a lot easier, one stomping and wiggling, and the other placing and holding the tree, by yourself you have to stomp the 2nd hold then simultaneously hold the tree at the proper depth while doing the wiggling). Then finally use your foot to finish closing up the hole around the tree.

This is like any other transplant basically in that you want the dirt nicely packed in around the roots so they can take hold and start getting nutrients.

Then after about a week we watered them once or twice along with a water based fertilizer.

Also plan if you are buying 1 or 2 year old seedlings, buy extra. At least 10% will be meek and pathetic looking or just not look worth planting. Also expect to lose about 10% of your planted seedlings that you will need to replant the next year.

We had a lot better luck with white pines vs. the scotch in our area (never tried any other kinds). The white grew faster and fuller, took a better shape, and just looked better in my opinion, plus they had this kinda blue-green look. The scotch grew slower and often died at the bottom and was real hard getting that classic pyramidal shape out of them. They often looked kinda "ballish".

 

[scott_vt]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( If I start a big one acre project like this and spend only $1000 on it over the first 3-4 years, then that is $5 per week. That is less than the cost of a six pack. )</font>

Mornin Gordon,
Not to break your thread, in fact I have enjoyed the read, but what kinda beer you drinkin out there?
Case of Shaefer $12.99 /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Shaefer, is the, one beer to have , when your havin more than one................ /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

scotty

 

[gordon21]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

The trees will be planted on the bottom acre of my 2.5 acre lot. The elevation drops 90' in the 2.5 acres. The lot starts at the top of a mountain. I will be planting in and around other existing trees and boulders at the bottom of the lot. All I need to do is thin out a few existing trees and the whole slope will have plenty of sunshine. Because much of the acre is on a 20 degree or so slope, I will be planting by hand initially. Several hundred trees will be great for preventing soil erosion. Some other poster mentioned some states will help pay for this to prevent erosion. Eventually I would like to make several tractor paths going up and down the hill, not crosswise. Going across a bumpy 20-25 degree slope on a tractor sounds like a bad way to test a ROPS.

As far as the $5 six pack, I must confess. that was merely a phrase about low cost. I prefer Appleton Jamaican rum and that is definitely not $5.

 

[teg]

Re: X-mas tree farming It\'s really cheap to do!!

A friend of mind bought an old Christmas tree farm, been getting free trees for years, wild and natural (and not Charlie Brown trees, either /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif). IMHO, better than the “fake looking” expensive ones. Every year, I bring back 5 trees around 15 feet tall for my friends with tall ceilings /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif. I need to plant some myself this year.