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December 17, 2009

Farmers, merchants aim to provide perfect Christmas tree

Farmers, merchants aim to provide perfect holiday tree

By VANESSA WHITE

PLATTSBURGH — Roy Magee, owner of Magee's Tree Farm, said stores are contributing to people's Christmas spirit.

However, his backyard produces Christmas cheer of its own.

Magee bought the West Chazy land in 1965 because he wanted a farm. He thought farming Christmas trees would be better than raising livestock: Christmas trees don't run around, he said.

Every winter season, Magee sells Christmas wreaths and yields 1,000 balsam fir, blue spruce, fraser fir and white spruce trees; 400 of them survive to be sold for $35.

"I don't cut any," he said. "People go out and cut them."

Magee said the process of farming trees begins with buying the seedlings, which he puts into a nursery for three to four years. The seedlings then go out into the field for 10 years where they are trimmed five or six times within the decade.

"I'm getting kind of old," Magee said with a quiet laugh. "I'm thinking about cutting (the number of trees produced) down to 500."

He said he expects roughly 200 trees to survive after he decreases his yield.

Magee said the majority of this season's patrons have been couples. "About 30 percent were families," he said. "People are coming earlier."

Jacqueline Harding and Mark Tiffer were at Pray's Farmers Market in Plattsburgh recently, looking for a Christmas tree to accent their new home together.

Harding said "something bushy" was her only requirement for a tree. "It's got to have the perfect figure."

"She's the one that's been hassling me about decorating," Tiffer said with a grin. Tiffer said Pray's was the first and last place they had begun searching for a tree.

Bill Everett, owner of Everett's Orchards Farm in Plattsburgh, said 21 of the 70 trees he had on his lot around Thanksgiving remain.

"Last year we sold out," Everett said. "We've not had any more than three or four left."

Everett sells fraser firs for $30.

"They hold their needles much better than other trees we had before," he said.

Everett began selling fraser and balsam firs in Plattsburgh eight years ago. He gets his trees from a friend's farm in Saranac Lake and sells them at a building leased by Pytlak on Military Turnpike.

"It's fun to watch from in here," Everett said, describing some of the customers he's had over the years. "You'll see a father and a son. Some buy a tree quickly; some take a good 15 minutes. They drive around then come back."

Everett said he's seen customers bring a tree out, spin it around, walk away to look at another tree, and then return to the same tree. This occurs several times before they settle on the tree they had originally chosen.

The orchard is bustling with people from the late morning to around 2 p.m. The frasers outside the building are accompanied by a bakery on the inside advertising cookies, donuts, cider and coffee. There is a room in the back of the building where wines are exhibited across from a display of 16-, 32- and 48-count gift cartons for apples.

Everett's will close in one week and will not reopen until mid-August next year when they'll begin selling apples from Peru in time for Applefest in October.

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