Holiday season provides fun for longtime tree farmers
Don and Peg White can take a little break after another busy year in the Christmas tree business. Both in their 70s and longtime North Idaho residents, their Carrousel Tree Farm in Cougar Gulch is a busy place every Christmas season, with an estimated 4,000 people visiting and buying nearly 1,000 trees.
The Whites baby their selection of healthy fir and spruce trees on the 40-acre spread, with each tree requiring an average of 10 years to mature. Customers choose trees early in the season, mark them with flagging, and then harvest their selections with provided saws.
Meeting while both were completing degrees at Oregon State in 1958, the Whites have lived in the Northwest ever since and are now one of the 15,000 Christmas tree growers in the United States. After earning degrees in forestry and geology, Don White worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and then became an extension forester for the University of Idaho. After teaching other growers how to farm Christmas trees, they decided to start their own operation near Lake Coeur d’Alene, where they have been for more than 40 years.
Operating the tree farm is fun for the Whites during the holiday season, when Don White helps customers select trees and Peg White makes wreaths and operates the gift shop. The real work is in the off-season, when planting, shearing, spraying for insects and other business duties demand their attention.
What is your job title? “Owners and operators of Carrousel Tree Farm.”
How long have you been doing this? “We have been in the Christmas tree business since the early ‘60s, first at Hauser Lake, then Sandpoint and then Coeur d’Alene. We purchased the farm in 1964, first breeding Arabian horses, then converting it to a tree farm a couple years later.”
How did you choose this line of work? “Working as a forester, people would ask about raising Christmas trees, then we got into it ourselves.”
Are you paid: (a) well; (b) more than you are worth; (c) slave wages, (d) could be better? “Slave wages, if we figured out what we made by the hour.”
What is the best thing about your job? “We get to work on our own schedule – if it rains, we don’t work. We enjoy the people the most. We open the barn (built in the late 1800s) and give out candy canes and hot cider. Most are return customers and many were once kids who came with their parents, who now come with their own kids.”
What is the worst thing about your job? “Droughts – we are at Mother Nature’s beck and call.”
Do you plan on doing this job (a) until retirement; (b) until something better comes along? “We will do it until we can’t crawl.”
Do you have any on-the-job stories? “In the winter of 1968-69, we had over 100 inches of snow. A little foal got in deep snow, and all you could see were little ears popping up and back down through the snow. It got stuck, and I had to pack it on my back. Then a mare got high-centered on a fence, and (we) had to chain-saw her free.”
Any bad experiences (please elaborate)? “We lost $40,000 of Fraser firs one year. Deep snows drove the deer down, and they feasted on those trees. The last of the Frasers is going out this year, and we don’t plant them anymore. The deer don’t eat anything but Fraser fir.”
If there was a movie made about you and your job, what actor should play you? “John Denver or Bret Farve,” says Don White, who hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years. His wife opts for Julia Roberts.