Christmas Business in the Kingdom
- Details
- Created on Wednesday, 03 December 2014 22:17
- Written by Ryan Rutledge
BARTON - 34 years ago, Bill Asack, owner of Asack and Son Christmas Tree Farm, moved to Vermont and started a small scale christmas tree operation to support his family.
When he first moved to Vermont, Bill wasn't quite sure what to do for work, but then his wife fell ill and he decided to start a business so he could be at home to take care of her.
"I became a caregiver, and I couldn't go out to go to work, so, I needed a job in the backyard basically. So, we got into the christmas tree business," Bill said, "I had some open land and looked at different crops and christmas trees kind of interested me."
When he started back in 1980, he only dedicated a few acres of land to the trees themselves, now he has just about 18 acres all dedicated to multiple species of christmas tree.
The two most common, and popular, types of trees that can be found on any farm are the Fraser fir and the Balsam fir. The process of getting the tree from farm to living room is a long one that takes more effort than one would consider at a glance.
"It's a long process from seed to santa," Asack said," and we control the whole process from seed to santa. We try to improve the genetics of our trees as we going along so that eventually we have better trees than we do now."
Raising trees is much like raising any crop or livestock, you raise each generation in certain ways to make the species stronger for future generations. Asack has a unique hybrid of tree on his farm as well. He calls it the Brasier, a hybrid of the Balsam and Fraser respectively.
One fact that Asack boasts is that in the last 20 years of business he has only ever had to shut down for one day. That day was last year when an ice storm forced him to shut down after his power was taken out. That didn't stop one customer, however, from making his way to the farm and cutting down a tree.
The business is a family inclusive one, Bill's son Andrew Asack volunteers his time every season to help his father run the farm.
"I've been growing christmas trees since I was about yea big," Andrew said, "I was passing my dad [transplant trees] since I was 7 or 8. I've been doing it continuously since I was a little kid."
For years now the Asack family would consider their farm a success, however that does not stop them from setting goals for their future sales.
"We always have a good season here but we are always looking to break our record in terms of the number of trees we cut. You know, we always like to be on the up swing instead of the down swing," Bill said, "We expect it to be a very good year, we have a good crop going so we are expecting a very good year actually. Based on what we saw the first weekend I am very impressed this far."
The record so far, according to Andrew, is around 980 trees sold during the Thanksgiving to Christmas Season and the family hopes to breach one thousand trees sold this year.