Cultivating trees is a steady way of life [Sunglasses]
By Saturday, the holiday rush was over at Buck and Darlene Miller's 10-acre Christmas tree farm near Silver Lake, and they were wandering through the trees with Katie, their 6-year-old black lab. The customers had gone. Bright and pale sawdust scattered along the ground near stumps where families had found their perfect tree, sawed it down and hauled it away. There was hardly a sound on the farm. Over three decades, the Millers have fallen into a quiet, happy rhythm of cultivating trees on this hillside farm. They raised their two children here and stayed put even as Mount St. Helens covered them with ash in the early 80s. Ask Buck how to grow a perfect Christmas tree and he shrugs. Sure, there's science to it, but there's also art and mystery, he says. "You just do it," he said Saturday. "This whole thing is an educated guess."
Each year brings a long stream of cars up the Miller's gravel drive. It's a steady business, even when the economy is sour, Buck said. He said he hardly keeps track of how many trees he sells, but estimated customers bought between 300 and 400 of his trees this year. The cars seem to come all at once, in spurts, Buck said. There's a sudden rush, as many as 60 cars in a day. Then it quiets down until the next run of tree hunters. "I'll never understand why they come at the same time," Buck said. "I think it's moving through the air." The Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association estimates that growers in the region— both wholesale and "you-cut" — sold 2.3 million trees in Washington alone this Christmas season. Those numbers show that the market may be returning to its peak of 2.6 million trees annually in the late 90s and early 2000s after a glut of oversupply hit the market in recent years, said Bryan Oslund, the trade group's executive director.
"It's been a very good year," he said. "Demand hasn't been this high for a number of years. Growers are, if not sold out, pretty close to it." The Millers, both 66, owned Watkins Tractors and Supply in Kelso for years and sold the business in January. They bought their land, at 1251 George Taylor Road, in 1973 and began growing Christmas trees on it a decade later. Over the years, they've provided trees to local churches as well as the community tree in Castle Rock. Some trees are legendary. In a scene reminiscent of the holiday classic movie "Christmas Vacation," a regular customer discovered two squirrels loose in his home after he bought a 16-foot tree from the Miller's. The man caught one with a fishing net and nabbed the other with a live animal trap. Both were released unharmed, Buck said.
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