Evergreen Acres Christmas Tree Farm - Wisconsin

 

I've been going with Nat and her family to cut down Christmas trees the day after Thanksgiving for 15 years.  And in that time, we've gone to a place down in Wilmington called Tammen Treeberry Farm.  When we moved into our house in Downers, Nat decided to have two trees inside.  One smaller one for the front room and a larger one for our family room.  That worked fine in theory.  But, what we found down at Tammen Tree farm was that they had a good selection of small and medium-sized trees.  However, they lacked in what I'd call "larger" trees.  

That meant that last year, we called an audible and ONLY bought one tree down at Tammen.  We ended up buying the second - "larger" tree that was pre-cut from Wannemaker's in town here.  And with that decision, we paid *double* what they were charging down at Tammen, but we had a really lovely tree.  

This year, Nat's folks decided to try something new.  A trip to a whole new tree farm - one up in Wisconsin called Evergreen Acres Christmas Tree Farm LLC.  The University of Illinois Extension office has a page up for their farm here.  And you can see the card at the top of this post that serves as the receipt.  A few things of note:  First...I paid $140 for two trees.  $65 per tree + $2/shake + $3/bale for each one. 

Below, the back of the card shows the location:

We had a nice time and enjoyed the experience.  A few things of note:

1.  They have A LOT of trees.  In different sizes.  It is CLEAR that they are continuously planting and replanting - which speaks to their continued investment.  That was one of the things that was becoming clear down at Tammen Treeberry farm.  They didn't seem to be planting much.

2.  They shape their trees in the field.  Every tree - from 9' tall down to 4' tall has the perfect pyramidal shape.  If you look closely at any of the trees, you'll see some pruning scars on the branches.  I like that and appreciate the care they've put in.

3.  You don't drive in the farm.  You park and walk.   That means you drag your tree back.  The pros that were there had brought snow sleds and used those to get their trees back.  Note to self:  bring a slide next year.  

4.  COVID changed things this year.  They didn't have their barn open.  So, limited things to do BESIDES buying the trees.  Also, I was surprised by the mask-wearing coverage.  Especially for Wisconsin.  There was A LOT of mask wearing.

5.  It wasn't too crowded.  When we drug our trees to get shaken/baled, there was like 2-3 trees in front of us.  At Tammen, the line is always like 15 people deep.

6.  We found a drive-in for lunch that compares (sort-of) to the Polk-a-Dot drive-in.  Pandemic and all, we stayed in our cars.  Next year, maybe we pick something else.