• Format
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
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  • Duration: 14 pages (transcript)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Identifier
  • MHC_Lower_Bentell_2000-04-26_transcript

Beutell 1 Tommy Beutell Mountain Heritage Center Agriculture Project Interviewee: Tommy Beutell Interviewer: Emily Lower Location: Tuckaseegee Date: April 27, 2000 Duration: 1:06:47 Emily Lower: This is tap C00-1 for the Agriculture in the Classrooms project. I’m Emily Lower and I’m in the home of Tommy Beutell, is that how you pronounce your name? Tommy Beutell: Yes. EL: Out on 107 in Tuckaseegee. Today is April 27, 2000. I would like to go back and ask you about when you first started in the business, you had said the 40s and 50s? TB: We got into the Christmas tree business in 1946 when I was 12 years old. We planted our first trees in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was not long after the war and most all of the trees being brought into the South were most all of the trees bought from lots in big towns were from up North, the Canadian provinces and Maine and some out of Montana - Douglas Fir from Montana. Are we going to talk mostly about the Christmas Tree industry? EL: Yes. TB: There were some, if there were any local trees sold, they were Virginia pines or Red Cedar trees. About that time a lot of the old fields were growing up and there were a lot of seeds in or seed to be germinated out in the fields and they made pretty good Christmas trees because they had plenty of sunlight to grow. And there was some of those trees brought in but the big chains like A&P or Kroger or Piggly Wiggly, if they sold trees it was usually a short needle fir tree from either Montana or Canada. I wish now that I had used my notes from many years ago. EL: No, no, that's fine. TB: But there were no plantation trees being planted anywhere in the southeast that I know of with the exception of cedar trees, there were no Virginia pines planted for Christmas trees. There were some cedar trees being planted in plantations but that wasn't very successful. They got a lot of diseases. Most of the trees sold well up into the 50s were imported trees from elsewhere. Beutell 2 EL: So, I guess I should back up even further. Where were you the 40s. Were you here? TB: I grew up in Georgia, north of Atlanta. We started retailing in 1946. My brother and brother-in-law were both pilots in the Second World War and they were getting ready to go back to school. Didn't have anything to do so they started… made a little spending money by selling Christmas trees. EL: Where in north Georgia were you? TB: I grew up in a place called Buckhead now, it's part of Atlanta. When I was there it was a very pleasant place. A lot of good neighbors, had a rural atmosphere. EL: Is that where you were born? TB: Yes, yes, I was born in… it wasn't Atlanta it was around the periphery of Atlanta at that time. Atlanta was just a big old country town then and it's very foreign to me now, Atlanta is. I go there when I have to. Go to the cemeteries and see some old friends but the atmosphere is entirely different than what it was when I grew up. EL: When were you born? TB: 1934 and I lived there until I married Joanne in 1957 and she is from Mitchell county. I met her when I was on a Christmas tree cutting expedition in 1956. She grew up on the side of Roan Mountain. But really, if there was a catalyst in Christmas trees, I know of no Christmas trees being grown around here. Back then if you were going to get a local tree, you went to some farmer's house and asked permission to ramble through his fields and cut a tree there. In Avery county, there was a cottage industry whereby they sold shrubbery to some of the people who were building second homes around Linville and Grandfather Mountain, but they were Mitchell and Avery county and maybe some in Watauga county. The local people would plant Fraser fir in their yards as an ornamental, it was a native form of shrubbery, and as they grew bigger, they realized that they could sell the limbs off of those trees or cut the limbs off and make wreaths out of them, or grave blankets. And this started back in the 30s, actually, so there was a thriving cottage industry in that area for wreaths and roping and grave blankets. In the late 40s we tried to buy some of these trees from yards or wherever to see as Christmas trees and the people said, why should I cut it when I can cut limbs off of it every three years and get more money for it that way, when, that was somewhat the beginning of, there was a need for a short needle species from the South, but there were none available and so, I know my brother and I for one, started collecting wild plants and planting them for Christmas trees. You couldn't buy them from any of the nursery plants. EL: So, you were in Georgia when you started in this business with your brother? Beutell 3 TB: Yes, it developed, the tree industry developed from, it didn't come from the farming community - it was a pull from the retail community. Retailers of trees in Winston-Salem, for instance, or Atlanta or Columbia, SC, they were the ones that provided the impetus for the tree industry. And it took a while. The first people planting trees were the retailers, not the farmers, but the retailers. The rural folks thought that if you wanted a Christmas tree, it was something out in the wild or in somebody's pasture to cut nobody with any sense is going to buy a Christmas tree. So most of the retailers didn't have an expertise in growing, in farming, but they provided a pull for that sector in creating a demand for a product that has turned out to be a viable industry for this part of the state. I think I'm right, I think the mountain counties of NC produce 95 percent of the trees grown in NC. It takes a special site to grow the Fraser fir, needs to be a high elevation and a well-drained loamy soil and I know State University is trying to figure out ways to grow them clown in flatlands but that will just… then everybody can grow them and it will kill the goose that's laying the golden egg. If they can grow them in the Piedmont of NC, they can grow them in the Piedmont of Georgia and Alabama and so our export market won't be. EL: What is loamy soil? TB: Loamy soil. Around here it's called a sandy loam. Sand particles are round, but whereas clay particles are flat and round particles let water percolate through pretty well whereas flat particles form a pan and won't let water through and Fraser fir have to have a lot of oxygen - the roots have to have a lot of oxygen and so if its waterlogged they cannot get the oxygen and they get a root rot on top their-and in a way this is good, because it restricts the range that Fraser will do well and being a native species it is adaptable to a lot of the high elevation mountain soils around here. And I hope they don't learn how to grow them somewhere else. Or they do grow them in Pennsylvania and Michigan, but they don't have the ideal temperatures that we have. We know that the Fraser will go dormant when the temperature reaches 90 degrees and so that means that corn does better when its tasseling, it doesn't want to get over 95, but it needs hot temperatures to really produce, Fraser fir grows better in areas that corn doesn't do well. That make any sense? It's the higher elevation where we are growing at 4000ft elevation and summer high temperatures rarely get out of the 70s, whereas here in the valley where we live, 90 degree temperatures are somewhat common in the summertime. EL: So, what about low temperatures, I mean where we have more of a temperate winter here, does that make any difference in how cold? TB: This is an argument that some of the northern growers try to tell our customers, that it won’t hold up well under cold temperatures, but I know that there is no data to support that contention. We've had 25 below zero on the mountain tops and up to 35 Beutell 4 below zero I think with no adverse effect on Fraser fir. It's a real alpine species and the low range doesn't seem to matter, I've never seen any data to suggest that it does. EL: I want to just pause this for a second. TB: It’s just something that I might be suggesting for you to read. I'm excited about it, if I could get time to do it, I might just get into it. EL: Since we are on books, I was doing, I usually don't talk during my interviews, but I will go ahead and mention this. I was working on a project with the American Chestnut Foundation earlier this year. I don't know if you are familiar with? TB: Yes, I'm familiar with it. EL: Out of their Asheville office and I may depending upon circumstances do some more work, I was talking with people who remembers chestnut trees and just kind of got my feet wet in it but I was introduced to a book that they had in their office called Tree Crops and I don't remember the author and I think it was written back in the 50s but it was an American who spent time in Europe and who was advocating tree farming in the US because it made sense, places like here where the geography is suitable for trees and how much it helps the land as well as its more profitable TB: That's 1850s - 1850 or 1950s? Probably 1850 when he wrote it. EL: I don't remember how long ago it was, but I should check that out. TB: Schenck I think was hired by Vanderbilt and that was the Cradle of Forestry is in pink beds over in Haywood county, I think and that was Cradle of Forestry in North America and so much of that was prompted by I think a fellow named Schenck from Germany. So much to do and so little time. EL: Let me see what else. We were talking about the soil and what kind of soil and how ideal about it being the ideal Christmas tree. What does the mean to you, why? TB: It’s fragrant, the limbs are strong enough to support ornaments, it holds extremely well after its cut if it is properly taken care of. Dr. Chastagner I think it’s at Oregon State or Washington State University has done research on comparing the different fir species and how they hold up and Noble fir and Fraser fir are the two best in their ability to hold up after they are cut. Loss of moisture or loss of needles, this is some of the criteria that arrive in his conclusion. We are also… people tend to prefer a short needle species and its well adapted to this area and we are fortunate to have it. In talking to some of the Noble fir growers out West… Noble fir has a tap root system. The Western growers have to go through the summer without much rain, so the trees that thrive out there have a root system that goes halfway to China. Around here we have so much rain that the Fraser fir Beutell 5 has a fibrous root system. So, they have trouble growing Fraser out there unless they can irrigate and we can't seem to grow Noble around here. So, West of the Mississippi, Noble fir is a strong specie, where around here its Fraser and we've fairly close proximity to major population centers so it works to our advantage. We can get a much higher percentage of salable trees if we plant 1000 trees, we're going to cut 900 or 950 of them as quality trees. The Noble fir people can't even approach that, they have a much higher cull factor. So, our bottom line is improved by the fact that our quality ratio is much better than most other short needle species. Its fast becoming the tree of choice in the East and really in the West, we're really just not getting much exposure. As an industry, our farmers are spoiled by our success. We don't have the market expertise that they have in other parts of the country where they really had to root for the market, I mean get out and work hard to find a market. Even during bad times, a high percentage of our growers have survived the old supply. EL: So how far out do your trees go now? TB: Oh my goodness. We have shipped to Alberta. We ship to Puerto Rico, The Canal Zone, most of them go within a thousand miles of Tuckaseegee, Texas, South Florida, some Florida, some up North - Chicago, St. Louis, we're shipping all over the country. Some of our growers shipped to California this year - this past year. There's becoming a shortage of Noble fir and southern California likes short needle fir trees. They can't get enough Noble firs, so they get Fraser fir from North Carolina. EL: How was it earlier, when your business was just starting? TB: We shipped within 200 miles of Tuckaseegee for the most part. It was all smaller trucks, we loaded straight from the fields. We cut the trees, wouldn't bale them, wouldn't tie them and carry them straight to the truck and load them and that evening or next morning, somebody would hit the road peddling them and new markets were suspicious, they didn't - I've never seen anything like this, I don't know if I can sell it or not. We would have to - one of our sales tactics was we met with someone we thought was genuine and were reluctant to try them, we would leave him 25 trees. You don't have to pay for them, don't have to pay for them now, just sell them, pay for them. If you don't, you don't have to worry about it. By the time the truck got back to Tuckaseegee, they would call and say we sold every one of those trees, we want some more. Most of the trees sold back in the 50 and 60s, really the 50s were the years the Fraser fir was beginning to gain some acceptance and this is in large part of the US Forest Services'. they used to work with the local people with less influence from environmentalists. On Roan Mountain, you see there was a cottage industry, I'm digressing, going back to the cottage industry in Avery county. It was mostly Avery country, around Linville, some in Watauga but there was not enough brush, there was enough market to sell all these wreaths and roping and grave blankets and foliage. There was a market there but a lack of, there wasn't enough product. The Forest Service office in Burnsville, Toecane Ranger District, realized that there was a need, so they started letting people go on Roan Beutell 6 Mountain to trim some of the fir trees that were growing there. That was a big success and that's how we were introduced to it. We went up - I don't know if it was the late 40s or precisely when it was, when they first started. We got some foliage, they would not allow you to cut Christmas trees up there, just the side limbs on the trees and you could go out in the garden, you could go practically anywhere. They didn’t want you to trim next to the wilderness but you could get a little off the road and go up with a machete or whatever, clippers, and clip the ends of the limbs off. That evolved into a Christmas tree project. Most of Roan Mountain, certainly not right in the gardens, but you get into the forest and the trees are three feet apart. A deer with antlers couldn't walk through there, the trees were so close together and they started letting a few of us cut and thin some of those trees out. Now there was resistance to that from Tennessee. They didn't want their beautiful Fraser fir cut. But the NC people there was an industry there in NC and they, the forest service worked with the tree people and they ended up laying off boundaries and marking the trees that they would allow cut and they had an annual sale where you would go and bid on boundaries. You would scout them out and see where - if you wanted brush you would be interested m one boundary, or if you wanted trees, you would be interested m a different boundary. But that if anything, that was a catalyst, that was the beginning of the Christmas tree industry. A few of us were savvy enough to lift some wildings and start planting as a plantation tree but the US Forest Service is to be commended for that. That didn't come from the states, they had stands on Mt. Mitchell, State Forest up there, you couldn't get anything up there but US Forest Service on Roan Mountain, Toecane - I forget if it was George Vitas or . There were two very fine gentlemen working there, that were very perceptive at what the public wanted and needed. Golly I wish I could think of the other gentleman's name. But this was back in the late 40s and early 50s Toecane Ranger District in Burnsville. EL: What was the first person’s name? TB: Vitas I will try to remember the other name in the time of it. EL: How do you spell Toecane? TB: T-o-c-a-n-e - I don't think it's c-a-i-n EL: When did you move to NC? Or was it a distinct time - sounds like you were up there. TB: I was drafted in 1957 and I got married in 1957. But I was working up here, we bought, we started leasing land in Mitchell county right under Roan Mountain in the early 50s or right about 1950. It was an experiment and bought our first land in Jackson county in 1954. So the first trees that we planted here were in 1954. But I was in NC, I was still in college. Went to the University of Georgia and studied forestry for a while and then got into landscape architecture and was a little confused, so I dropped out. I knew I was going to be drafted and met Joanne in the meantime and moved here. Permanent residence 1959. I was in the Army and all of my leave time or time off was spent here Beutell 7 planting trees or whatever goes along with it. EL: You mean when you say here, you mean Jackson county? TB: Yes. But we were cutting trees that we had planted, we were cutting those trees in the late 1950s. This was Mitchell county. Had to carry them for a quarter of a mile. Back then you didn't use good farm land to plant Christmas trees on. Christmas trees, even the extension service looked at us with curiosity. There was no data from state university, no encouragement. We talked to George Conrad in Mitchell county and Paul Gibson in Jackson county. The extension service has been a big help, but they viewed us more with curiosity than anything. Toward the end of the 50s it started catching fire. What caught the attention of a lot of the farmers see, the farmers, I'm not being derogatory, but if you live out the country you don't go buy a tree anywhere. There are trees everywhere and somebody's that growing a crop that's free, that you just go out in the woods and cut or go out in the field a cut, you've got to be a little crazy to do that. You can't eat them, you can't sell them. The going price back then in the late 40s, we could buy truckloads of trees for 10 cents a tree - that was somebody's pasture. This was pines or cedar trees, wild, uncultivated. But when some of the local folks saw a ton truck loaded with trees going down the road or two-ton truck load of trees - how much - going price was $2.50 a tree back then, so if you had, and we could get 400 trees on a truck, that's almost $1000. But an agricultural crop on a ton and half truck with a 14 or 16-foot bed worth $1000, back then that's 50 acres of land. We were buying land for $18-20 an acre. On a truck that has a crop that's worth 50 acres of land - that opened some eyes. Actually, trees are cheaper now than they used to be. If you compound it - we're having to pay $2 - 4000 an acre now for land that will support Fraser fir. Back then it was $18 and 20 an acre but you couldn't borrow the money to buy that $18 piece of land. The bankers thought that it was a joke. You could not borrow money from a bank to buy. They would not value the land for anything. They would loan money on your reputation or they would loan it to you if you could prove your worth, but they didn't consider the land in that equation. Federal Land Bank wouldn't loan money back then . We tried, they just laughed at us. They would only loan it on bottom land , now this is western North Carolina. They would loan money on bottom land or second bottom - improved pasture near a big stream. But the first agency to loan money on Christmas tree land was the Farmers Home Administration and we got the first loan in Western North Carolina for Christmas trees. EL: So other people who were farming in the area, more like traditional crops so to speak, it sounds like early on they looked at you like you were crazy too. TB: They did, they would say you ruined more good pasture land. That it was a waste, that we were taking up all this good pasture land. And now the tone is a little different. There is still some of that going on in Ashe and Allegheny counties. Saw somebody a couple of years ago, at the log cabins on the Blue Ridge Parkway up in that part of the country and the fellow was a farmer that I was talking to and he said that he leased his land to some Christmas tree farmers and they just ruined it. You couldn’t do well with that land after the Beutell 8 trees were off it. Of course, that was someone that leased and did not put much back into the land. We're land owners so we put more into the land than we take off. Our land is more productive with life right now than it was when we started and we’re proud of that. I’m real distressed about this public thing in South Carolina because they’re telling us that we don’t care about the environment, just don’t ship us any insects on these trees that you’re growing out in the fields. It’s a double standard. We got into Christmas trees because we thought it was a way to make a living out in the forest and in the woods and we've always gotten satisfaction out of what we put back into the land Now the way lawyers are and the media, the polls say don’t put this stuff out, but when it comes to the media, they damn us when we don’t. They don't look at both sides of it. Well, we have to put up with some of these aphids because they are grown own m the wild - and if they kill all the aphids, they use more chemicals. The public say that they don't want us to use chemicals but they don't want any insects either. So, when our buyer says no more insects, what are we going to do. (phone rings) EL: Do you have any regulations then, in terms of what chemicals you do use? TB: Yes, there are standards and we are still going to… we're not going to drop the atom bomb. We'll use a bb gun and a bb gun will do it. Virtually all of our chemicals are biodegradable - they are organic compounds that break down within hours and we’re still going to scout, we're going to use IPM, Integrated Pest Management, but we're going to have to put one or two more layers of chemicals out there because in large part because of the media and their desire for something sensational to put before the public. EL: When did you first start having these difficulties, is this a more recent problem with what you have just been talking about or was there a certain time you can see within the last 10 years or 20 years that there seem to be more problems like this, maybe either with the public or in regards to? TB: There are less insects on the trees now than before. Our technology is much better. We’ve got a good variety of chemicals that have little impact other than what we’re targeting. We've got better delivery systems for the pesticides. State universities work with us 60 lbs. per acre of one chemical, we found that we can control our target with 15-20 lbs. We like to spray at night if we are going to spray with an air blast, we spray at night because the air is still and we can use less chemicals. The insect’s pores are open wider and so if the label calls for a quart per acre, we get by with a pint sometimes. At night, where it would take a quart in the daytime. Our technology is better. What was your question? EL: I guess I was interested - a couple of things - one is that you have mentioned having the difficulty with the aphid situation. TB: Oh yes, your question was about is it a bigger problem Beutell 9 EL: Or have you had complaints you have had to deal with things like that in the recent past or was that? TB: No, it was… we had more insects years ago than we have now. It's a bigger problem now because it is primarily in one area. It was south Florida and down there you see they had regular visits by exterminators that are looking for ways to make money. And it’s more of a media event than it is actual. The media has fed on it for the last couple of years. We had problems with aphids, some of the other growers had more problems with spider mites. One talks about having to make an adjustment on a snake that crawled out of a tree. And it was a good friend, a very good producer that had this problem. Golly Tommy, we don't even have corn snakes where I live, the snake got on the tree down there somewhere but he had to adjust for it. The retailers are guaranteeing everything. Somebody knows that if they buy something a Lowes or Winn Dixie, that they can go back and get an adjustment. The retailer that we sell to guarantees the trees even after Christmas. If you want to bring your tree back after you’ve used it, they will give you your money back. If you will lie to them. And this is becoming more… I mean if some of the people in high places can get away with it, why can’t I? What’s wrong if I tell a tale or exaggerate a little bit, slant it. It's becoming worse. The last two years in particular have been very bad in south Florida and its more of a local thing. I know that all growers have some of these. And I know we are shipping them to New Orleans or Texas, but those are more rednecks, but the people in south Florida, half of them came from New York City or some city where they live in a somewhat sterile environment and they can't tell an aphid from a tick. EL: What you just said is interesting. The farmer has to be more of a businessperson. And you said that before we started the tape, that it wasn't as simple as it used to be. TB: Yep. Used to just be hard physical work but now you've got to a lot of meetings because we support or local North Carolina Tree Growers Association and certainly the national and we go to the meetings. We always bring something back with us. We always learn something, every meeting we go to and it might not be from the lectures but it’s from talking to other growers that have had similar experiences. My daughter and son in law learned a great deal yesterday about markets and what's going on out there. Over half of the tree growers have gone broke the last 10 years because there have been too many trees and the markets are changing. There are not many buyers out there, very few buyers. But the ones that are there, if you have 5000 trees to sell, they don't even want to talk to you. You have to have 50,000 or 100,000. Am I making any sense? The number… there are some people that are specialized, some growers that cut their trees and take them to Asheville Farmers Market or take them to the Birmingham Market, or Chattanooga, Atlanta or Winston- Salem and sell them through those outlets. That's specialized. They might rent a lot in some neighborhood. They are specializing. There is a place for people that do that, but if you are shipping your trees and growing several, you have got to be able to be in touch with the mass merchandise to be successful. Beutell 10 EL: So when you say specialized, they are specialized in where they are choosing to sell or actually in what they are choosing. I mean, they've chosen one type of tree to sell. TB: Yes, not really. It's that they have made the effort to market their trees and they are finding their niche, which is either wholesaling through a farmers market or retailing on a private lot in Winston Salem. They are making sure their trees get marketed. But the days of somebody planting trees and getting them to grow pretty good and just setting back and waiting for the market to come to them, those days are gone, they're over. We had golden years in the 60s and through the 70s and up into the 80s pretty well. But all of that changed in the mid to late 80s. Some of us anticipated it. We knew what was happening, we knew that there were four trees being planted to every tree being sold. It was very much promoted by extension, by state university and extension. Tree growers were making, were doing real well for many years, but then there was so much interest and so much venture capital available. You see back then, it was a long-term gain situation where investors would venture capital and invest it in Christmas tree growing as a tax incentive. So, it just blew out of proportion and turned into a buyers’ market and the people who really didn't pay much attention to marketing, they've falled by the wayside for most part. EL: So do you sell most of your trees to… do some of your trees go to some of these smaller places like farmers market or are most of yours going out to the big? TB: We sell to a lot of chose and cut growers. This is a big segment of the industry, in the Piedmont, the Coastal Plain, and really in the western part of the state, where individuals would come to the farmer and cut their own tree. We sell to some of those people, we sell to individual garden centers. If somebody comes in here with a pickup truck and wants 50 trees, we sell to them too and we value those customers. END TAPE SIDE A EL: So, I'm interested in learning a little bit more about the growing of the trees themselves. Like how long it takes for example. What is the growing period for when you're harvesting or cutting the trees ready for market? TB: Okay. I might start by what we did back in the 50s and 60s. There was no planting stock available so we had to pull our plants from the wild. We thought it was a crop for the marginal land so we planted the poorer land. Put them in areas where you couldn't grow corn or couldn't plow. We didn't use fertilizer, we didn't have herbicides or insecticides We didn't know that they even were needed, so we mowed either by hand or with a machine back then. It took us 10 - 15 years to produce a tree from planting in the field. Now we are producing trees in 7 years, after 7 growing seasons. That's 6 and a half years. So much of this is due to our better technology We know that fertilizer, particularly phosphorus, is beneficial. We're putting out lime now. We know that soil Beutell 11 nutrition is critical. We're growing a better tree now in about half the time it used to take. And it's through increased technology. State University has been a big help through their research program. Dr. Jim Shelton, retired now, but he was in Fletcher. He's an agronomist, I think that's the proper term. He's a fertilizer expert, but his research data has put more money in the pockets of the Christmas tree growers than all of the rest of the research put together. We started getting chemicals for insect control, spider mites were the big problem back earlier and some people didn't plant many trees because they were intimidated by this insect that was so difficult to control. We finally got some chemicals. The chemicals are getting better, regardless of what you read in the media, the chemical companies are producing more compatible chemicals for the environment meaning that they break down fast. They're organic compounds that do break down as soon as they hit something they turn into something friendly to the environment. We had a pretty good selection of herbicides, weed killers, in the 70s. Really the 60s were tough. All you could do was plant and mow and we were beginning to learn a little about fertilizer but our technology now and the resources available to us, the people that are informed can make some money at it. Round-up revolutionized what we were doing. That's one chemical that has cut our herbicide costs in half. EL: So, when I think about raising trees. I don’t know if that is the right term to use. TB: Growing. EL: It seems like it’s not, that the labor intensiveness would be different than other crops, like agriculture crops and I'm trying to get a better understanding of once the tree is planted. First of all if you are starting with saplings or how you start and then through its growing period it sounds like you are doing a lot of fertilizing and what kind of maintenance the trees need while you're…? TB: We figure that it takes about, it is labor intensive, and if I have a real problem with the future it's going to be availability of people that are willing to work to produce the crop. That, availability of labor, and government regulations are the two nemesis that I can see. These are problems that we might not be able to overcome. We figure it takes 800 hours per acre to produce an acre of trees - to grow an acre of trees, not to cut them. If you are going to plant trees now and hire help to grow them, 1500 trees per acre, you can figure on it costing $15-20,000 to grow that acre of trees. It's very capital intensive. We've got credit. It's a lot easier, it's a lot of money, but you can borrow money to do it now. Back in the 60s, 50s and 60s and early 70s, you couldn't borrow money for it. It was not accepted as a viable crop. The lending institutions would not loan you money to grow something this ridiculous. Or they just, they weren't with it. The trees grow better on steep hillsides where you cannot get equipment. Some of the other regions of the country have an advantage there. They can grow them quite a bit cheaper than we can. They can develop machinery, they can straddle six rows of trees. We cannot. Anything that covers more than one row is liable to turn over and kill somebody. So, it takes us longer, it costs more to grow the tree but we grow a better product. North Carolina Beutell 12 is known for having the best trees. A large number of the best trees. We’ve got better growing conditions because of the low summer high temperatures. We can just grow a better tree, but it costs more. We do have better machine technology too. We're getting better technology all the time. But at our national tree association convention in Tampa this past winter, we had a major grower meeting where they were all professional people there, real grass roots, full time Christmas tree farmers and they were expressing a lot of their apprehensions about the future of the industry. And the consensus was that the younger people tend to want to be near a keyboard now rather than out in the field. It's a lot easier to make money with less physical effort. There are guest worker programs that are always up in the air, it's political, bickering and unrealistic arguments put out there. EL: What programs did you say? TB: Guest worker, the immigrants the migrant labor. EL: I hadn't heard that term before. TB: We prefer to call it guest worker programs because they are here as guests and they're supposed to return to - there are people out there still saying that there's plenty of local help available - maybe so if you will pay them a high wage and they don't have to do anything, but you try to get somebody for $10 hour to get out and work hard like we all work. I mean, my wife can do twice as much as some of these younger fellows from the university down here. And she's willing to do it and so am I. We grew up that way, knowing that if we wanted wheels we had to work for it, but now some of the younger kids. I mean, we got a good crop coming on but their value system is a little different from the value systems that we grew up with. We knew we had to root hog or die. And now there are so many programs that they don’t have to get wet when it’s raining We do. Our pants legs, we come in with our pants legs frozen several times a year and cold all over. The available land to produce the trees is diminishing. I've got a friend in Kentucky that always puts things to words real well. He says, "One of the days Tommy, you're going to be able to tee off in southern Virginia and play golf all the way into Florida." It's golf courses. We used to get land for $20 an acre, now it's $2-4000 an acre and it might be up $10-15,000 an acre. The sites that are real suitable for growing Fraser fir are the cool sites in the summertime. That's where everybody wants to come to. So somebody from Chicago, we look at $4000 an acre land and think that's… we're used to paying quite substantially less than that. We think that’s just out of sight. But here comes somebody from Chicago or Miami and they see it and they think it’s a bargain. There's not much land available. The land base is dwindled. The labor base is dwindling. These are concerns of the growers that really look at the end and understand what's happening. EL: I have a couple of thoughts that came from what you just said. One was if you were going to talk to a bunch of school age kids, like in public school, somewhere between Beutell 13 middles school and high school, and there were some kids that were thinking of tree farming, I mean that are interested in it, in what you are doing or something - what would you say to those kids about the work? I mean what you have just been saying about the terms of getting out there and working hard and having a hard time finding labor. TB: There are some people that have a sense of purpose, that want to be outside and work with nature and if this is what you want, if you want to be outside and be around birds and nature most every day, you might not make as much money as if you would go into computers, but it’s a way of life. I would not trade places with anybody would not trade places with anybody. r Even with the times that I'm frazzled and torn up, but if I can leave the house and go to the mountain, I'm at peace because I enjoy nature and I have had a satisfaction out of making the land more productive of life than before. It would be a personal satisfaction and that sense of purpose. You're going to have to wear boots, rough boots and you're going to have to get scratched and jacket stung and I don't think snake bit. Everybody gets stung by something, but we have never had anyone get bit by a poisonous snake. We've got plenty of them. We've carried snakes out of… there's 3 or 4 of us on the job that will carry them out of the field to protect them. We have very much a reverence for life. But if nature is what you want to be near and you don't mind working hard the way of life is well worth it. And there is a future for Christmas trees, because less and less people are willing to make the sacrifice. The problems will be financing. That's all relative as far as I'm concerned. The land that you can buy now for $4000 an acre, 10 years from now is going to be worth $12,000 an acre or $10,000 an acre. Really, we have done more, we've done much better with our real estate investment than we have with Christmas tree investment. The real estate has enabled us to borrow money for production purposes. If I were young with the same motivations I had 50 years ago, I'd do the same thing I'm doing now. It's a lot easier to buy land than it was back then, because you can borrow money on land. If you can convince the loan officer that you are a worker and will save and do without. We lived below the poverty level for 15 years, my family did. We sacrificed we didn't eat meat for long periods of time, we didn't go anywhere, couldn't afford gas, couldn't afford to buy… drove an old beat up pickup truck everywhere we went. But we were buying land. And, like so many people that have made it, you have to realize the sacrifices and who cared if we had meat. We wanted it, but we wanted to be outside working with nature and be farmers. We’re proud to be farmers. And my kids are proud to be farmers too. Farmers get put down, we're whipping boys of the environmental movement. They're claiming that we are poisoning the streams with our pesticides. Dr. Sidebottom of State University for the last year and a half has been working on this situation and in doing so she is monitoring the water insect populations in the native streams off the forest service lands where there are no roads, no pesticides, no nothing and she is monitoring the insect populations in the tree farms - am I rambling too much? Our farm down here, the check stream is on the forest service just across the ridge from our stream. There is some insect larvae that are very susceptible to any type of chemicals. If this chemical is present in that stream you are going to be able to detect it by the insect larvae in that stream - certain types of larvae I'm not sure right now which ones they are. But their population is going to be down. Our Beutell 14 stream… the entomologists can detect no difference between our stream and the pristine stream off the forest service land. Even the most susceptible of the insects in there, their population is as good here as it is over on this land. Which speaks volumes. I think that the population was higher in our stream than it was on the, I mean number wise, the soup was a little thicker, the stew was a little thicker here than it was over there. But see we're putting out calcium which, in the form of lime. We're putting out phosphorus, mostly rock phosphate, fossil phosphorus. We're building the calcium and phosphorus levels which is very important for life. This stream here is off of granite. There is very little phosphorus, very little calcium. We don't have shellfish down here, just little bitty things. You go to Kentucky or Tennessee and this spring would be, would have twice as many fish in it. There would be mussels, there would be snails because of the calcium, because of the phosphorus. Am I making any sense at all? We’re talking care of our land. We don’t get credit for it by some of the… I’m an environmentalist myself, that’s why I am working with nature, that’s why I’m out there all the time that's where I need to be but we are getting slammed by people that really ought to learn a little bit more about what they're saying. We’ve got more game on our land, more rabbits, more birds I'm proud of that. It's easy to say you're killing everything and not knowing what… Some farmers maybe ought to be looked into a little bit more, but most of them that I know - I’m a professional farmer, I know that I’d I abuse my land that I’m not going to be a farmer for long. So, if you are investor, if you are putting your life savings into something, you're going to take care of it, you're going to do what you think is best for that land. If you don't have it under your feet, you're not going to make a good living. You have to take care of… most of the farmers I know look at it that way EL: This is the end of tape C00-1

In this interview, conducted as part of the "Agriculture (Past, Present, Future)" project by the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University, Tommy Beutell of Tuckasegee discusses his life in the Christmas tree industry. Beutell was born in Buckhead, Georgia, in 1934, and has been in the industry since 1946, when he worked with his brother and brother-in-law. He settled in Jackson County, North Carolina, in late 1950s, though he had been leasing land and planting trees in North Carolina since 1954. Beutell discusses the history of the industry and its roots as a cottage industry in Avery and Mitchell Counties before retailers began to develop an interest in specialized Christmas tree farming. There was no interest from the farming community, and he describes how the United States Forest Service was able to act as a catalyst for the Christmas tree industry by opening land on Roan Mountain for the industry. He discusses the environmental requirements for growing trees and the importance not abusing the land.

• Creator
  • Beutell, Thomas C., 1934-
• Contributor
  • Lower, Emily
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
  • Text
• Date
  • Date interview: 2000-04-26
  • Date: 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s (Decade);
  • Date digitized: 2015-05-22
• Extent
  • Duration: 01:06:47 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 14 pages (transcript)
• Subject - Topic
  • Agriculture
  • Beutell, Thomas C., 1934-
  • Buckhead (Atlanta, Ga.)
  • Christmas tree growing
  • Christmas tree industry
  • Christmas tree industry -- Forecasting
  • Roan Mountain (N.C. and Tenn.)
  • Tree farmers -- North Carolina -- Jackson County
• Location
  • Jackson County (N.C.)
  • Avery County (N.C.)
  • Mitchell County (N.C.)
  • North Carolina, Western
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Mountain Heritage Center Oral Histories
• Identifier
  • MHC_Lower_Bentell_2000-04-26
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Mountain Heritage Center