Tree huggers abound as Christmas draws near

By DeWolf Fulton
Posted 12/14/17

“You’ve gotta love trees and people to be in this business,” Frank Fales said as he secured a seven-foot Fraser to the car roof of a customer who joyfully announced, …

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Tree huggers abound as Christmas draws near

Posted

“You’ve gotta love trees and people to be in this business,” Frank Fales said as he secured a seven-foot Fraser to the car roof of a customer who joyfully announced, “It’s the Cadillac of trees. It won’t drop a needle!”

Usually “tree huggers” have environmental concerns, but at Christmas time that changes. In the next few weeks both buyers and sellers alike regard fir trees with affection, as the Fales family on Metacom Avenue knows all too well.

Mr. Fales started 14 years ago selling Christmas trees at the entrance to Fales Farm across from Benny’s on land his grandfather bought 95 years ago. This year in four weeks time he said he may have sold up to 800 trees trucked in from Canada and Maine. How many depends on the weather, he said.

He enjoys the chatter with customers about their purchases and Christmas preparations as much as the trees themselves. With his wife Jenna, brother Donald, sister-in-law Peggy and step-son Joseph, the Fales family rises early each day to make dozens of wreaths and set up fresh trees.

His mother, Claudine Fales, who many recall from the front desk at Rogers Free Library, still watches the tree activity from her window where at 93 she “makes sure we toe the mark” while she reads her preferred subject of celebrities and JFK, according to Peggy Fales.

Christmas trees make demanding work, and some local vendors have passed it on. Mr. Fales said Joe Kinder used to sell Christmas trees at his 315 Hope St location, but confessed he “got out of it and went into law.” He said Mr. Kinder still visits to see Fales’ trees on Metacom and talk about the joys they bring both.

Joe Perry of Perry’s Nurseries 500 Metacom Ave. feels likewise. He sold Christmas trees until recent years when he passed the work on to a friend. “It’s tough out there in the cold, rain and wind,” Mr. Perry said, “For the little money you make, we did it for the love of the trees. People love the fresh smell.”

Mr. Perry said he sold $5 trees in the late 1940 and ’50s with his father, as well as “two-foot-tall Charlie Brown trees” for $1 each. The emotions he attaches to selling trees at Christmas one year prompted him to give sale proceeds to Ethiopian farmers suffering a crisis. Other years his family put tree proceeds into a Catholic Relief Services fund. “Love the tree, and love the people,” he said.

The trees at Fales come from Canada (Fraser fir) and Maine (balsam fir). The balsam has the aroma, the Fraser the stronger branches, better to hold the ornament weight. Both have good needle tension and won’t shed, Mr. Fales said. For trees from 6’ to 8’ tall, today’s prices range from $35 to $50. 

His Charlie Brown trees sell for about $10 each and for a variety of reasons. Some to small apartment owners, the elderly, students in dormitories, for porches or the kids’ room. Other tree vendors for the most part have similar prices.

Nearby to the south at Usher Farm, Patrick Usher, Jr. sells all his trees for $40 each. His Charlie Brown trees go for $5. He also recommends the Cooks fir (1/2 balsam and 1/2 Fraser), what he calls “the best of both worlds.” 

Each of Mr. Usher’s customers has a different reason to buy. Repeat customers and local residents Brian Maillot and Melissa Weaver picked out a 7’ balsam that Ms Weaver said was nicely shaped and perfect for their Paull Street home.

“I’m not a fan of fake trees,” Ms. Weaver said. “It was a family tradition to go to Waterford, Conn., with my aunt and uncle, drink hot chocolate and cut down our own tree. I like the smell of a real tree,” she said, adding she is certain her terrier poodle Cricket will also love the tree.

Mr. Fales said his fondness for Christmas trees led him to grow his own balsams where he has property in the town of Unity, Maine, population 2,009, and best known as the home of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

Tree growers in Maine are attached to their work and take it seriously, Mr. Fales said. The one-foot-tall seedlings he buys are already five years old. He quoted one grower who told him, “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap.” It takes a tree seven years to reach seven feet tall.

The pride that growers take in their work was evident one year at a national growers tour on a farm near Bangor, Maine. At the end of the tour, Mr. Fales said the veteran farmer pointed to a perfectly shaped tree and told the group, “If I could grow trees as good as that for the rest of my days, I’ll have led a good life.” 

While some families make the switch to artificial Christmas trees, Mr. Fales said many return to real trees after a few years, admitting they miss the smell. He cited another universal appeal of real trees: “They are grown, not manufactured.”

Whatever one’s personal taste in a tree — balsam or Fraser, Charlie Brown or artificial — each family has its heart-felt reason to scurry out and buy in the next few weeks. As Frank Fales put it, “Christmas comes in the house with the tree.”

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