Growing family traditions, one pine tree at a time

Heather Graves

Staff

December 9, 2024

WISCONSIN RAPIDS – For nearly four decades, the Woloseks said they have dedicated their lives to planting, nurturing and providing the Greater North Central Wisconsin community, and beyond, with Christmas trees.

Seeing the families come out to Wolosek Christmas Trees (2400 Tower Road, Wisconsin Rapids), Christine Wolosek – who co-owns the tree farm with her husband, Jan – said, is her favorite part of the job.

“We’re in such a fast-paced world nowadays, so the farm allows families to slow down and connect with each other,” she said. “It’s a fun time to see families get together and enjoy the season.”

Three-plus decades of growth

Jan said he and Christine purchased the land that is now home to Wolosek Christmas Trees nearly 40 years ago.

“We took over the farm probably close to 40 years ago, and some of the trees were planted already,” he said. “Then we took over another small tree farm (nearby), and some of that was planted already, and we just kept planting more as we went.”

Owning and operating Wolosek Christmas Trees, Christine and Jan said, gives them an opportunity to be a part of an important aspect of the holiday season for dozens of families each year – finding that perfect Christmas tree.

“The kids are always very excited about the tree,” Jan said.

With choose-and-cut and pre-cut options available at Wolosek Christmas Trees, Christine said families have the opportunity to pick whichever option works best for them.

“With the choose-and-cut trees – we provide saws – families take the hay wagon out and take turns cutting them down,” she said. “They just go through rows and rows of trees until they find their perfect tree for Christmas.”

Jan said sometimes they win and sometimes “we have to help them out.”

If the weather is nice, Jan said some families take hours to find that perfect tree.

“It’s good for families to be in that environment and connect with each other and with nature,” he said.

In the last 30-plus years, Christine said she and Jan have been able to watch families grow up as they return to the farm each year.

“They come back year after year – so they’re infants, then they’re toddlers and then they’re preschoolers,” she said. “We see them every year, and they keep adding to their family, so it’s an enjoyable experience for us.”

If the weather isn’t great, Christine said the Wolosek Christmas Trees shed is a welcome alternative – Jan said it also works well for older customers.

“Older people, a lot of times, they don’t want to go in the field – they just want to get a tree and go,” he said. “So we have a tree lot set up in a pole building here – so, it’s kind of like inside shopping. They’re out of the elements, and the trees are dry.”

A new trend with Christmas trees – particularly in the last five years or so, Christine said, is colored trees – which are hand–spray-painted by their daughter.

“We have a wide variety of colors – purple and teal and red and all different white, blues (and) pink – some really exotic colors,” she said. “Our daughter is getting really creative with the colors. Those are very popular. We have people drive quite a distance to come and get one.”

A year-round commitment

Though Wolosek Christmas Trees is busiest during the holiday season, Jan and Christine said that’s just the end of a very long year-round process.

“The only time you have up – meaning you aren’t doing a whole lot with the trees – is during January, February and March,” Jan said. “It’s winter and the trees are dormant, but the rest of the year it’s not ‘plant them and watch them grow,’ I can tell you that. To farm at this scale – we’re farming around 80 acres, which is about 80,000 trees – it’s a full-time job.”

Jan said the season takes off in the spring – starting with seedlings.

“You start the spring with seedlings – which was figured out the year before, because with seedlings today, you have to order them pretty much a year in advance,” he said.

Though a lot of the planting is done using a machine, Jan said there are times when hand-planting is needed.

“If something dies, you’ll hand-plant,” he said.
Though not “super hard work,” Jan said the planting process is very time-consuming.

The remainder of the spring, he said, is spent fertilizing, weeding and sheering.

“Then all summer is spent tagging to get ready to see what you’re going to harvest,” he said. “Then you start harvesting.”

The growing period for most Christmas trees, Jan said, is “anywhere between eight and 12 years.”

“You could probably start at eight, and you’re going to get small ones – five, six-footers,” he said. “To really get the eight-footers, you’re going to be in the 12-year range.”

Because Wolosek Christmas Trees is located on “sand country,” Jan said they irrigate the trees using an overhead pivot.

“We had to order a high-profile machine, which is designed for sugar cane, so it’ll go over tops of 12-, 15-foot trees,” he said.

The irrigation system, Jan said, helps them keep the trees hydrated – “because if a Fraser fir gets super dry, if you had, say, a drought year, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Over the years, Jan said they have definitely noticed a change in the industry.

“The varieties changed quite a bit, because back (when we started), there were hardly any balsam or Fraser furs,” he said.

In addition to balsam and Fraser firs, Jan said Wolosek Christmas Trees has scotch pine, white pine and canaan fir.

“All of the fir trees are related to each other – it’s the seed sources that make the difference,” he said. “Frasers are (from) a North Carolina seed source, canaans are from West Virginia and balsams are from anywhere from Canada to Wisconsin. It depends on what strain – there’s so many different strains, it’s unbelievable.”

The Woloseks also have wreaths, branch bundles and garland available at the farm.

In addition to the choose-and-cut and pre-cut options available at Wolosek Christmas Trees, Jan said they do quite a bit of wholesale trees as well.

“Most of our stuff will go to Iowa and Illinois, maybe a little bit in Kansas once in a while,” he said. “We were really big into that years ago, but as I’m getting older, I got to slow down a little bit, so we’re not doing what we did. So we’re only doing a few thousand trees a year that are going on the wholesale market.”

Once they harvest the trees and get them ready to ship, Jan said it’s up to the people on the other side of the wholesale process to sell the trees.

“Once they leave here, they’re kind of their trees,” he said.

Jan said he also has his own retail tree lot at Nena Hardware in Peoria, Illinois.

“There are more people down there, and it’s a different market,” he said.

Jan said Wolosek Christmas Trees never “shuts down” the choose-and-cut offerings “because there are 80,000 trees out there.”

“I’ve never had to say, ‘I have to close my farm, because I don’t have any trees left,’” he said. “Where other farms say they’re closed after this date because they’re out of trees, we’re never there. If I think my numbers are off a little bit, then we will cut less on our wholesalers. That’s never happened, but if it did, that would be the plan.”

Jan said he has additional requests for wholesale trees all the time, but “I’m not taking any new customers.”

“The customers I have with wholesale, they’ve been with me for nearly 40 years,” he said. “They’re like friends of mine – I mean, we’ve been together that long.”

The future of Wolosek Christmas Trees

Jan said he doesn’t quite know what the future holds for Wolosek Christmas Trees.

“It’s up to the kids,” he said. “If the kids want to take it over, down the road, I think it’ll be here. If our health stays good, we could keep the choose-and-cut part of it going for a number of years.”

Jan said he wouldn’t be surprised if his daughter takes over the farm.

“She likes the trees,” he said.