Lanai Hemstrom proudly refers to herself as a tree hugger.
So it’s no wonder she decided to grow trees for a living. Lanai and her husband, Jerry, opened Hemstrom Valley Tree Farm in Granite Falls about seven years ago, and it’s been an adventure ever since.
Lanai likes to joke that a Christmas tree farm would be a good setting for a reality TV show.
“It’s something to watch people come out and go Christmas tree shopping,” she said. “They’ll wander around for five or six hours and then go back and pick the first tree they liked.”
She has regulars who come back every year, like the couple with triplets who always try to find a triple-top tree so they can put a tree topper on for each child. Or the woman who moved to Minnesota, but drove back to Washington for her Christmas tree.
“She goes, ‘I just can’t find trees like that out there,’ ” Lanai said with a laugh.
Her favorite memory is from the second year they were open. It was late one evening and the Hemstroms were about to close up shop for the night when a truck and trailer pulled into the lot. A couple and their six children — all dressed to the hilt in dresses and suits — had become lost while looking for the farm.
“This was around 6:30 and it was pitch black,” she said. “So we went and got our cars so we could shine the lights onto the trees.”
The family found one and the dad gave money to each of his children to give to Lanai. It was a heartwarming moment for her.
“It was making us all cry,” she said with a smile. “I mean it was a really happy story!”
Lanai and Jerry began planting their trees in 2002, long before they opened the farm for business. Currently about 50 percent of the trees are noble firs, the most popular type she sells. There are also the bushy Turkish fir trees and the stately Nordmann firs. They’re easier to grow and care for than the Douglas firs, Lanai said.
It takes about 10 years for a tree to mature to the point where it’s tall enough to be cut, Lanai said. She only sells her trees once they’ve topped 5 feet.
She debated opening a year earlier, but wasn’t sure they’d have enough trees above the 5-foot mark. They decided to wait, but then the trees seemed to grow taller overnight.
“I was like, ‘Stop growing!’ Jerry said I had to quit telling my trees I love them so much so they’ll quit growing so fast,” she said with a laugh.
It can be an emotional job for a tree hugger: Lanai cried when a 1,000-year-old spruce tree on their property fell down nearly three years ago. She has to repeatedly tell herself that it is OK to cut down the trees.
“The year we started, I walked out, I grabbed a saw and I cut down a tree and gave it away,” Lanai said. She told herself that the tree was going to look pretty in someone else’s house.
“That’s the only way I can do it,” she added.
A neighbor with a Christmas tree farm suggested to Lanai years ago that she should start her own.
“She said to me one day, when they were going to retire, that I should plant Christmas trees,” Lanai said. “And it was just the furthest thing from my brain.”
Lanai and Jerry eventually decided to run with the idea, although they say they had no clue how hard it would be until they started.
The drought this past summer didn’t make the work any easier.
“I look at my trees and say ‘Please don’t die. Please don’t die,’” Lanai said. “And they’re dying.”
Lanai watered the trees in the evenings and at night, when it was cooler. It took about two weeks to rotate her sprinklers around to water all 13,000 trees. She couldn’t prune them because that would have stressed her trees out more. She stopped mowing the grass growing up underneath the trees for fear a spark might cause a fire.
Even with all her efforts, many of the farm’s thousands of trees were stressed and dying.
“You have to plan a year ahead of time and take a wild guess on how many trees you’re going to need,” Lanai said. “What’s going to be my death toll this summer? It’s already well past what I ordered.”
Lanai also worries about insects and disease taking their toll on her trees.
She pointed out a neighboring farm whose trees had been taken over by what she called an incurable disease.
“We’re hoping that’s not what’s happening to our trees,” she said. “Many, many tree farms are getting this disease and it’s on the nobles. It’s really hard. It’s not a beetle, it’s a disease, and they don’t know where it came from.
“When I see a tree out here that’s stressed, I don’t know if it’s the drought or it’s the disease, and I’m debating whether to cut it out.”
Even with all the difficulties, Lanai wouldn’t trade in her trees for anything.
“We’ll never be able to retire off our trees,” Lanai said, adding that the money the farm makes helps pay the taxes on the land.
The homestead has been in Jerry Hemstrom’s family since 1886, and the couple intends to keep it in the family.
“You always hear about the family farm going under,” Lanai said. “We’re trying to keep it going.”
Jocelyn Robinson 