3:44 p.m., Dec. 16, 2008----As co-proprietor of Loblolly Acres, a Christmas tree farm in Woodside, Del., Cheryl Epps has been working long and hard in recent weeks. So when her husband, Victor Epps, comes home from his job as a chiropractor at Dover Health Care Center, on occasion he has to do one more adjustment -- to Cheryl's aching shoulders and neck.

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But Epps isn't complaining because business is booming. “We are having a very busy Christmas season, thus far,” she says. “And this was our busiest October ever for our pumpkin pick.”

Epps, who runs the farm with her father, Gooden Warren, speculates that the bleak economy is actually bringing in more business. “I think a lot of people are deciding that they can't afford to take a big trip but that they can come here and enjoy a day on a farm,” says Epps.

“Staycation” day trips have been happening in Anna Stoops' household all year long. The agriculture agent for University of Delaware Cooperative Extension in New Castle County and her husband, Kenny, omitted a vacation away in lieu of local outings with their four-year-old son, Quinn. One that they are eagerly looking forward to, says Stoops, is a trip to a Christmas tree farm next weekend.

“I'm giving my son an experience that I always loved as a kid,” says Stoops. “Growing up, I never had a commercial tree; my family always went out together and picked out a tree and carted it home.”

During her early years, Stoops recalls selecting a fir from the trees growing at her parents' livestock operation, Two Eagles Farm, in Smyrna. Eventually, though, the family decided to forego these “Charlie Brown” trees in favor of the full, professionally sheared trees at Hickman Tree Farm, also in Smyrna.

“Christmas tree growers spend just as many long hours in the summer shearing, or shaping, as they do now, selling trees,” says Gordon Johnson, agriculture agent for University of Delaware Cooperative Extension in Kent County. “A white pine in the wild isn't going to have that tapered Christmas tree shape,” explains Johnson. “Its branches will be more open.”

Thirty of Loblolly's 160 acres are devoted to Christmas trees. Epps and her father grow two kinds of trees -- white pine, which is native to Delaware, and Douglas fir, a non-native that flourishes here. About 90 percent of her customers favor the Douglas fir, a dark green or blue green needled tree that also ranks as one of the most popular Christmas tree species nationally. She prunes her Douglas firs throughout the summer but the white pine must be sheared in June before they bud out.

Shearing takes place two to three years after planting and continues ever year until harvest. Trees are harvested, on average, 7 to 10 years after planting.

At Loblolly Acres, shearing went off without a hitch this summer but planting was another story -- “a painful one,” Epps says. Six thousand seedlings were planted in spring and for the first five to six weeks they looked good. But then the weather turned hot and dry and by late July, 90 percent of them were dead.

The summer of 2007 was a similar story -- out of 5,000 planted, about 90 percent died because of hot, dry conditions.

Epps isn't sure how she will fill her customers' demand for trees in 7 to 10 years, when these seedlings would have matured, but right now she is too busy to worry about it. She offers school tours during the week and a slew of activities every weekend including hayrides to the tree fields, a petting zoo, an opportunity to watch wreath-making, and visits with Santa. Visitors can snack on homemade chili, fresh-baked cookies and other goodies.

“Loblolly Acres is a destination farm, a place where people go to buy an experience, not just a tree,” says Johnson, who is an expert on agri-tourism and helps Delaware farmers develop or expand their farm's recreational or educational activities.

These days, Delaware agri-tourism includes apple orchards, strawberry U-Pick fields, a Western-themed dude ranch, a farm with a medieval festival, and an herb farm that runs special events. But Johnson says that Christmas tree farms are the granddaddy of agri-tourism.

“There have been Christmas tree farms in Delaware since the 1880s, when German settlers introduced this holiday tradition to the U.S,” says Johnson.

Currently, there are more than 30 Christmas tree farms in the state, the overwhelming majority in Kent and Sussex. Delaware's warm summers will prevent it from ever rivaling the Pacific Northwest in tree production, or, here on the East Coast, such areas as upstate Pennsylvania and the mountains of North Carolina. Christmas trees are, nonetheless, a solid niche business for Delaware farmers, says Johnson.

For a list of area tree farms, visit the Delaware Department of Agriculture's marketing page and click on Christmas tree farms, under the Information listings at left.

Article by Margo McDonough
Photo by Danielle Quigley