Tucked away in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, a 40-acre farm produces nine different Christmas tree types. Each year, hundreds of families traipse through Christmas Ranch Tree Farm to cut down their tree.
Roy and Carol Freeman started the farm in 1982, shortly after they married. Roy thought a tree farm would be a great opportunity. Carol, who grew up on a farm in western Nebraska, was ready for the challenge.
“We started looking for property, and he saw this,” Carol said. “There were no pine trees on it at all, no evergreens. But he could see the value of what it was going to be.”
The farm opens each year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Technically, Christmas Ranch opens at 9 a.m., but without a gate on the property, customers line up even earlier to be the first to buy their tree.
That first weekend is the Freemans’ busiest. They and their staff barely get a break as they greet customers, help them find their tree and serve them homemade cider, hot chocolate and cookies.
This year, they sold more than 600 trees over Thanksgiving weekend. They usually sell out their entire stock — more than 1,000 trees — by the third week of December.
“Even though it's crazy, and I can get grumpy by the end of those four days — because you're up early, you're up late — I just love having the families come out and see the kids get so excited and run around on the farm,” Carol said. “I love taking them out to the field and talking about trees and growing.”
The Freemans’ farm is a destination for families across the Kansas City metro. Lifetime filmed a holiday movie, “My Sweet Holiday,” there in 2020. But business didn’t start out that way.
They planted 2,000 trees their first year, but hardly any survived. The next year, they planted twice as many, but lost a lot to a dry summer. By their third planting year, nearly all of the 6,000 trees they grew thrived.
“But the sad thing about that was when those trees got big, we didn't have the customer base because we were new,” Carol said.
Before long, they grew a loyal customer base. Grace and Ben Ramey have come to Christmas Ranch with their four kids — 10-year-old Ethan, 7-year-old Gideon, 5-year-old Abel and 2-year-old David — since Ethan was a baby.
“We just come as soon as we can after Thanksgiving,” Grace Ramey said. “Part of the experience, I think, is just hiking around and looking at ‘em all and finding one that's pretty full and looks nice.”
After measuring to make sure the tree is taller than Ben, Ethan helps his dad cut down the tree. Carol knows many families who visit the farm annually for their trees. She sees their kids grow up and, sometimes, bring their own children to the farm.
The teens the Freemans employ each year to help with tree sales also come back again and again.
After a person picks out and cuts a tree, the Freemans and their staff shake it out to get rid of any dead needles. Then, they put it through a baler, which wraps the tree in netting to make it easier to transport.
If customers want, they’ll also drill a hole in the bottom of the tree to make it easier to put on a tree stand. Then, while customers pay for the tree, two employees tie the tree to the top of the car for its journey to its new home.
Connor Norris worked for the Freemans for five years. He came back this year to pick out his tree and help process it for its trip home.
“The first year was a little nerve-wracking because that first Friday after Thanksgiving is just a rush,” Norris said. “People lined up on the road and all that. I miss working with all of the guys — the camaraderie.”
Christmas Ranch is a family business, and Carol and Roy consider their young staffers part of that family. Carol hopes to throw an employee reunion to get all the generations of employees together.
Running a tree farm keeps Carol and Roy from holiday traditions like Christmas markets or decorated home tours. But Carol doesn’t complain.
“It makes me think more about what Christmas really is,” she said. “I don't go do a lot of shopping for gifts and things. It's more of the real Christmas spirit.”
Evergreen trees help people feel that Christmas spirit. They’re also hard to produce. Because of Missouri’s tough soil and dry weather, growers more commonly cultivate the Scotch Pine, with its short needles, than the better-known Fraser or Douglas fir trees, which the Freemans order in from Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Freemans plant the trees in April after a few months of clearing the field and cutting the stumps. Then, it’s time for round-the-clock watering and care. In summer, they trim the trees into their iconic shape. By the time they open their doors in late November, the Freemans are winding down the season.
Christmas trees only grow about a foot a year. When they’re young, they’re especially vulnerable to pests and drought.
Hank Stelzer, a forestry specialist for the University of Missouri Extension, says Missouri’s recent droughts harmed tree growth. Rain has shifted from evenly distributed, smaller rains to a lot in one fell swoop — what Stelzer calls “frog wranglers” — that can kill younger trees and stunt the growth of older ones.
“We might have, might say we're normal (in total rainfall) for the year,” Stelzer said “If it comes down in one fell swoop, then it's not getting into the soil to recharge.”
Prolonged drought kills many seedlings before they can grow and dries out the needles on more mature trees. It can cause financial problems for tree growers and decrease the quality of surviving trees.
In 2022, during the last agricultural census, about 550,000 fewer trees survived to be cut due to drought than during the last census in 2017.
The past few summers in Missouri have been particularly dry. During the summer, Roy had to water the Canaan Fir trees, which are more susceptible to drought, every morning and night.
“We don't water every tree, we just couldn’t — there's not enough water,” Carol said. “There's not enough time, there's not enough money. The Scotch pine tolerates a drought a little bit more. But if it's a first-year seedling out there in the field and we get a really dry, hot summer, we can lose up to 50% of those trees.”
Closures of three nearby tree farms over the years — including the only farm in Missouri to ever send a tree to the White House — also affected the Freemans' operation. Fewer farms means more families come to Christmas Ranch for their trees. The steady sales are a good thing, but Carol and Roy don’t have room to increase tree output, so they sell out more quickly than before.
Stelzer says farm closures happen for many reasons. The farmers who created a boom of tree farms in Missouri in the 1970s and 1980s are retiring and often sell their land to developers. Other issues, like drought and pests, may push people out of the business.
“I think over the years we've seen a decline, but now we're seeing an uptick,” Stelzer said. “COVID kind of brought back nostalgia, and folks are wanting to have that real tree effect.”
Carol and Roy both belong to the National Christmas Tree Association, which picks which trees get sent to the President and Vice President, and the Missouri Christmas Tree Producers Association. Carol currently serves as Missouri’s representative in the national association.
The organizations offer tips on best practices and help keep new tree farmers afloat. A few new farms have opened in Missouri, which Carol says keeps the tradition alive.
After four decades in the business, the Freemans are starting to think about retirement. But they intend to ensure the farm stays open for generations to come.
“If you're going to do something like this, you go into it knowing that it's a long-term adventure,” Carol said. “We'd love to have the farm move on to a new family that would take it over. I'm not going to sell this property unless it's somebody that wants to grow trees.”
In a few days, Christmas Ranch will sell out of all the trees, wreaths and merchandise that the Freemans prepared for this year.
After months of work and sleepless nights preparing trees for other families, Carol and Roy will finally have time to decorate their own tree. It’s not hard to pick which tree to take into their home.
“I have what's left — the last tree on the farm,” Carol said. “There are a few years I've just had one of my little tabletop trees.”
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