Born and raised in the wooded hills of Northumberland County, farmer Larry Snyder with his wife, Joanne, and their family will be leaving Pennsylvania for a visit to the White House in November, a trip that includes an insiders’ tour and meeting with the first lady.
In August, Snyder, owner of Mahantongo Valley Farms, Pitman, Schuylkill County, won the National Grand Champion Christmas Tree competition with a Douglas fir, as awarded by the National Christmas Tree Growers’ Association.
Every year, the winner of the national competition gets the honor of bringing a Christmas tree to the White House, where it will be decorated and placed in the Blue Room.
“We’ll be able to present a tree to the White House and give it to Melania,” Snyder said. “We are excited, although it probably hasn’t fully set in yet. As we think about it more and more, we’re astounded.
“We get a tour of the White House, so we’re taking the whole family; children and grandchildren,” Snyder said.
‘Wow’ feeling
Christmas tree growers Paul and Sharon Shealer of Evergreen Acres Tree Farm in Auburn, Schuylkill County, know that “wow” feeling, too.
In 2000, Shealer presented an 18-foot Douglas fir to First Lady Hilary Clinton after he won the National Grand Champion Christmas Tree honors.
In 2008, Shealer had the runner-up national grand champion tree, so the family traveled to Washington again to present a 12-foot Fraser fir to Dick Cheney and his wife.
“It has nothing to do with politics,” Shealer said. “I look at it as presenting a tree to the nation.”
Both growers had to win the Pennsylvania Farm Show’s grand champion Christmas tree in order to compete in the national contest, which is conducted in several different states. This year, the national competition was conducted in Pennsylvania in Abbington Township, north of Scranton, where Snyder’s tree competed against 20 other trees.
“It had nice color, uniform foliage, and I guess it just had the eye appeal that people like in a Christmas tree,” Snyder said.
His champion Douglas fir was just under eight feet tall, the cutoff height allowed for the aromatic contestants.
When the time comes, it will be a White House groundskeeper who will choose one of his trees to be taken to the White House, Snyder said.
‘Plenty of food’
Mahantongo Valley Farms, from a Native American word that translates to “a place where we find plenty of food, is in a sparsely populated area of the state.
“We’re basically rural,” Snyder said. “The closest town is Klingerstown, and that’s about 10 miles west of us. We’re in the middle of everywhere.”
It’s a place where the trees have room to grow.
Snyder’s triumphant foray into the world of evergreens began back in the late ’70s, when he helped a neighbor plant some trees.
A graduate of Mansfield University, Snyder taught elementary special education for many years. He purchased his uncle’s farm, and he and his wife grew produce to sell at farmers’ markets during the summer.
“We raised a lot of produce, and then we began planting trees,” Snyder said.
About 75 out of the 150 acres they own are used for the production of Christmas trees, Snyder said, most of which are sold to surrounding states.
“We gradually planted our acreage into Christmas trees,” Snyder said. “My son grows pumpkins every year, so we still have some produce.”
It is a real family business, Snyder said, with wife, Joanne; his son, Aaron; and daughter Lydia (Bomgardner), all helping with the work.
“It can be labor-intensive, especially depending on how particular you are when grooming the trees,” Snyder said. “I still do a lot of hand-trimming; for myself, I prefer that.”
They grow about 25 different varieties; the Douglas, Fraser, and concolor firs; Norway, Meyer, and blue spruce; and crosses, like Korean Balsam.
“A lot of them are very beautiful trees, but everybody likes something different, so we have a variety,” Snyder said.
Added ‘pop’
Getting ready for the Christmas season takes even more work. This year, there’s that added “pop” of anticipation.
“We’re anxiously awaiting and preparing for a trip to the White House,” Snyder said.
Shealer’s farm has been in the family since 1936, and it was in 1945 that the family got into the business of selling Christmas trees.
The story is that Shealer’s dad and grandfather sold Christmas trees to be able to afford a turkey for Christmas dinner.
“That’s how it all started, when my dad got out of the service after World War II,” Shealer said.
While November and December are their busiest months, growing Christmas trees requires a lot of work all year, Shealer said.
“You plant more trees than you harvest,” Shealer said. “It takes 7 to 10 years to produce a quality Christmas tree, and there are losses all along the way.
“Shearing trees when the temperature is 95 and the humidity is high is not all that thrilling: It takes a lot of hard physical work to produce high quality trees,” Shealer said. “We have 60,000 trees in production, and every tree is pruned by my son and myself; that’s our form of quality control.”
Evergreen Acres is also a family business. Along with Shealer’s son, Paul Anthony, daughter-in-law Pam helps with the trees. Daughter Briana works with their holiday retail market.
Shealer’s wife, Sharon, is a big part of the business, operating the skid loader, driving the tractor and doing the bookkeeping.
Shealer and his son start pruning trees in June and end the following April.
Many of the trees will go to southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as New York, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey.
“For me, it’s been a passion my whole life,” Shealer said.
Tree specialist
For 28 years, Shealer served as the Penn State Extension Director for Carbon and Schuylkill counties and also as northeast region Christmas tree specialist.
“I educated Christmas tree growers about production all over northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shealer said. “There’s a lot to this business that people don’t realize.”
Shealer has also been a guest lecturer in a number of states on the art of growing Christmas trees.
“We’ve had the Farm Show grand champion about seven or eight times,” Shealer said. “We are not a big farm but we produce a very high-quality product.”
Artificial trees have made a dent in the industry, Shealer said.
Real trees hold about one-third of the national market, with artificial trees taking up slightly more, about 35 percent, with the balance of households not having Christmas trees, Shealer said.
“I’m a strong believer in purchasing a real Christmas tree,” Shealer said. “Real trees are biodegradable, they contribute to homes for wildlife and they produce a great deal of oxygen for people to breathe. It’s a totally renewable resource.”
Artificial trees have none of those qualities and will take thousands of years to degrade in landfills, Shealer added.
Some people don’t like the idea of cutting down a tree, but it is a crop, Shealer said, adding that the trees would not have been grown if they didn’t have a market.
When it comes to choosing a Christmas tree for their own home, Shealer said they like to have different species.
“Last year, for the first time, we put a Korean fir in the house and it was the best-keeping tree we’ve ever had,” Shealer said. “We brought it in at Thanksgiving, took it down Jan. 10, and put it out by the bird-feeder, where the birds flew in and out of it all winter. That tree did not turn brown and drop needles until May.”
Contact Marylouise Sholly: specialsections@readingeagle.com.
