CBJ: Christmas tree growers make old trade high-tech

It’s been 500 years since families first decorated a Christmas tree, but as Virginia’s tree growers mark the anniversary, their annual meeting took a decidedly future-oriented thrust.

Marketing on Facebook and harnessing the power of GPS navigation systems to lure wandering tree shoppers were the focus of lectures during the recently held Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association annual conference.

Hosted in Waynesboro for the first time, the meeting drew about 60 people to the Best Western Conference Center, where speakers drew nods of understanding when talking fertilizer, soil and elevation.

Exhibitors sung the praises of leather-insulated rubber work gloves (flexible) and sold “Secure Your Tree” signs as farmers browsed trimmers, ribbons, wreaths and VCTGA hats (green, mesh in the back).

A plastic bin quickly filled with tickets for a chainsaw raffle.

“Get on the map,” urged Virginia Geospatial Extension Specialist John McGee in an afternoon seminar on computer marketing.

Pointing to bar graphs and maps, McGee explained how Christmas tree farms gain exposure through online mapping services and work with in-car GPS navigation companies to assure that farms are properly located for tree shoppers.

“They kind of make decisions as they go,” McGee said of drivers and tourists.

He cited a survey that showed how 80 percent of tourists spent less than an hour planning trips before hitting the road.

“People are using smartphones and in-car navigation,” he said.

McGee explained how farmers can correct mapping problems like the one experienced by Greg Lemmer of Boys’ Home Christmas Tree Farm in West Augusta: Lemmer said some GPS units put drivers on Route 808, which runs them into Calf Pasture Creek. The stream does not have a bridge crossing.

Sue Bostic, of Joe’s Trees in Newport, followed McGee with an introduction to Facebook.

A quick survey of the room found that every farmer but one had a Web site, but only a handful used Facebook.

“People do read it,” Bostic said. “I’m sold on it.”

Even Joe Freeman, who presented the official Christmas tree to the White House in 2007, said he was yet to post on Facebook or Twitter.

“I need to set up those pages,” said Freeman, of Mistletoe Meadows in Laurel Springs, N.C.

As growers reunited for the first time in at least a year, many shared their “brags and blunders” from the previous growing season.

Sharing farming methods is one of the perks of the conference, attendees said.

“They’re the same fools you are,” said Dave Thomas, a tree farmer near Harrisonburg.

He said stocking up on supplies is also easier at the conference than paying for shipping.

Seeing friends is the attraction for Billy and Mary Apperson, of Millfarm Christmas Trees near Williamsburg.

“It’s not so much the science,” Billy Apperson said, “it’s how the business is going.”

The industry has been boosted by the “Virginia Grown” agriculture promotion and other “buy local” campaigns, said association President Virginia Carroll.

“We feel we enhance the rural picture of Virginia,” she said, emphasizing as tree growers often do that the industry is renewable, recyclable and “green.”

“The Christmas tree industry has been doing this for decades,” Greenville-area grower Bill Francisco said of eco-friendly and local-source advertising.

“You’re competition is the fake tree,” Francisco said.

Tree growers share techniques and band together for advertising because their niche needs to be united, he said, against the plastic imitation.

Tony Gonzalez reports for the (Waynesboro) News Virginian.