Northshore Living: Cut Your Own Tree

by Stephen Faure

Many families make the choosing and cutting of the Christmas tree a holiday tradition. It’s a chance to ride out into the country and take a walk through rows and rows of trees, searching for the perfect one to adorn the holiday halls. Several farms are a short drive from any northshore location.

Karen and James Porter run a nifty little tree farm in Slidell, aptly named Porter’s Trees. Though it’s only five acres, the farm is home to a good selection of quality trees—mostly Leyland Cypress. “It’s the most popular, along with its cousin notibilis, the Noble Cypress,” said Karen.

She pointed out another tree with a darker blue-green hue. “That’s a Carolina Sapphire. It’s known for its aroma. If you rub the branches you can smell citrus and mint.”

A ways up the road in Pearl River, Clarke Gernon owns Shady Pond Tree Farm, a 45-acre operation known for growing rare tree varieties from around the world.

Exotic varieties at Shady Pond include the King William’s pine, a native of Asia. Gernon calls it “an exquisitely beautiful tree.” It’s one tough tree, too. “It’s the one variety of tree Katrina was unable to affect—they all came back straight up after the storm.”
The Deodar Cedar is a tree native to the Himalayas. Gernon said it’s an ancient tree, pre-dating the first Christmas. The Egyptians used the wood in building sarcophagi and altars.
Shady Pond features three varieties of the popular Leyland Cypress, as well as the Carolina Sapphire, Eastern Red Cedar and the Virginia Pine, the latter being the first variety grown in Louisiana specifically as a Christmas tree crop.

Gernon has a philosophical outlook about the business. “The Christmas tree plantation is where rural and urban societies come together. It’s an opportunity to communicate with our friends and neighbors who choose to live in an urban environment, to teach them how Mother Nature operates.”

Traditions

Both Porter and Gernon have many families who come out year after year in search of the perfect tree. Gernon says one family has made a special tradition out of their visit to the Christmas tree plantation. “They have a set of Tiffany Champagne glasses, kept in a wooden box. Each year, after choosing their tree, they get the glasses out and have a Champagne tailgate party in the field.”

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to focus one’s attention on traditions. Katrina did extensive damage to both farms, but “We still had reasonably decent sales that year. Our customers were very understanding,” Porter says.

“The Christmas of 2005 became our anchor—that invariant part of human experience we could turn to that could not be blown away, could never be flooded. The value of tradition that year was everywhere,” Gernon says. One of his customers showed her indomitable spirit by purchasing a 10-foot-tall Carolina Sapphire tree and setting it up on the slab of her house in Waveland, where her living room used to be.

“If that’s not a commitment to human tradition, I don’t know what is.”