Christmas Tree Farming
November 28, 1976
Decorations will soon adorn countless evergreens and Beckett and Beckett, a Susanville based Christmas tree operation, are busy as usual this season. Charles Beckett is pictured above with a 10 foot silvertip, or a genuine Red Fir, that is ready for delivery.
Beckett operates the business now with his son, Dean, after beginning the enterprise in Susanville in 1938.
On the average, Beckett handles around 40,000 trees annually and in record years has sold up to 80,000 trees. He expects to sell even more trees in the future as he is getting a higher yield of silvertips which he describes as “the Cadillac of Christmas trees.”
Most of their trees are sold in California’s major metropolitan areas.
The Becketts grow white fir and silvertips on a half section on Roop Mountain near Susanville, on 4,000 acres they own in Siskiyou County and also on approximately 4,000 acres they lease in Siskiyou from Southern Pacific. Besides Christmas trees, they also engage in other logging operations.
The most popular trees of buyers are silvertips of a height from 5 to 7 feet that take 5 to 20 years to grow, according to Beckett. However, he also sells trees of sizes ranging from 1 to 40 feet. For example, Beckett sells large Christmas trees to Knotts Berry Farm.
The annual cutting begins in the latter part of October and Beckett says the evergreens can preserve almost indefinitely if they are kept cool and damp. Beckett explains that a good tree must experience some freezing weather before it is cut so the needles and sap set hard. If they are cut before it freezes Beckett says, “They’re tender as tumbleweed.”
Beckett says Christmas tree farming is a year round business. For instance, he had 22 men pruning and thinning trees in Siskiyou this summer. Some may feel that Christmas trees are a fly by night operation, but Beckett said many people have been in the business for years.
The retail price of the trees may vary from $2.50 to $5.00 a foot, according to Beckett, while the wholesale price ranges from 50 cents to $1.25 a foot. In 1929, Beckett became involved with Christmas trees in Wyoming and began his own operation here after working for Half Moon Fruit and Produce and then deciding he could operate on his own. (Advocate photo).
