Christmas Miracles Abound At Olsen's Tree Farm

Last year, Walter Olsen was finally forced to contemplate retirement.

In July, he spent four days in the hospital and nearly died after a serious bout with the tickborne disease babesiosis. His recovery was long and harrowing — he had blood clots in his legs and lungs, lost mobility, and even had a difficult time speaking because of the toll the illness took on his central nervous system.

Doctors told him to stop working. Well into his mid-70s, he considered following those orders, if only briefly.

“I contemplated not opening up,” he said. “But I laid in bed and thought, I can’t continue without doing this. It would kill me to stop.”

Following that instinct, he opened Olsen’s Christmas Tree Farm for its 67th year in business in the fall of 2020 — and what followed was nothing short of a Christmas miracle, he says.

“Within a week of opening,” he said, “I was a different person. I got my strength back, and I was walking and talking.”

He told the story last week while standing outside on the 5-acre property across the street from the bay on Route 24 in Flanders, while standing next to his wife of 53 years, Sharon Olsen. It was an unseasonably warm day, and they both wore plaid flannel shirts and jeans, no need for a coat, no smoke curling from the chimney of the well-worn wood stove that for years has warmed the interior of the workshop space inside the small gift shop.

But there was no mistaking the time of year: “The First Noel” playing on the radio drifted out of the gift shop, and the aroma of Christmas trees wafted through the air. Every so often, a customer pulled in to check out the selection of fresh cut Douglas fir, balsam fir, concolor fir and Canaan fir trees dotting the property.

As they aged, and with Olsen’s health challenges over the last two years, the couple has required more help from time to time, particularly on the day the fresh-cut trees arrive at the farm from upstate New York. Olsen had the misfortune of being ill again this summer, contracting both Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which he said required intravenous medication and once again had doctors urging him to embrace full retirement.

And once again, he chose not to heed that advice, opening for business the week before Thanksgiving.

“Now, I’m feeling fine,” he said with a smile. “I’m 77 years old. How good do I expect to feel?”

In its 68th year of business, Olsen’s Christmas Tree Farm is a scaled-down operation compared to what it was when Walter and Sharon took over the business from Walter’s father, who shared his name, after his death in 1989. The elder Olsen began growing Christmas trees on the property in 1951 as a sort of hobby, ultimately turning it into a little side business while maintaining his day job working as a radio technician for RCA.

When he died after battling leukemia in 1989, Walter bought out his share of the estate from his sisters, and that year he greatly expanded the operation by growing another 6,000 trees, in addition to the 3,000 his father had planted.

Christmas tree growing can be a complicated agricultural pursuit, Walter explained. “You have to do it carefully,” he said. “You have to cut them fast enough so they don’t get oversized or spoiled, because they’re growing into each other. There is a delicate art to growing them at the right rate.”

Like his father, Olsen did not put all his eggs in the Christmas tree-growing basket. He and his wife operated a marina bearing the family name down the road for many years, and he also built custom homes for many years — his final project is the house the couple lives in now, at the top of a gently sloping hill at the back of the property. The Olsens did much of the framing work and roofing together, and she cleared the lot driving a skid steer loader he had purchased for her birthday. (She doesn’t like to let him drive it.)

They clearly have the work ethic it takes to carry on the tradition his father started, and it meant something to him. He has heeded some of the final words of advice his father gave him.

“I remember just before my dad passed, we sat at the kitchen table,” he pointed to the house that he grew up in, that sits on the front end of the property and is now occupied by a different family. “He said, ‘You’re not going to make a lot of money growing Christmas trees, but if you keep growing Christmas trees, it will help you keep up with the taxes so you don’t lose the property.’ And that’s exactly what we did.”

The apple — or, in this case, the pine needle — doesn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to father and son. He recalled that his father was diagnosed with leukemia around Thanksgiving of 1988 and still opened the tree farm for Christmas that year, before dying on Father’s Day of 1989.

Olsen said he has “no desire whatsoever” to retire, and while the growing operation was phased out several years ago, his natural penchant for staying busy inadvertently led him to expand the business in another, simpler way. Finding himself with time on his hands in between customer visits, he started making wreaths a few years ago, inside the small but cozy workshop the couple call their “home away from home” during the selling season. It is outfitted with a worktable and wreath-making machine, with metal templates of different diameters hanging on the walls. Two identical easy chairs, draped with well-worn blankets, are positioned in front of the wood stove, making it a haven for days when the weather is raw, damp, and cold.

It’s a tableau that brings to mind an easy comparison of another famous — although, according to some, fictional — married couple busily creating handmade items in a workshop several thousands miles to the north at this time of year.

The wreaths are made with excess greens cut from the bottoms of the trees, and it’s something Olsen said he’s come to enjoy over the years.

“I can’t sit still, and we ended up with an extra product and it makes more money, but it got to the point where I was making so many wreaths that I’d get annoyed when customers would come to buy a tree,” he said with a laugh. “It’s funny how things evolve.”

While the majority of trees sold at Olsen’s now come from the stock of fresh-cut trees trucked in from upstate New York, Olsen maintains that customers still get a unique experience by purchasing one at his farm. He says his trees are “truly fresh cut,” arriving from upstate New York rather than Canada, the provenance of most Christmas trees sold in the area. The trees he sources from central New York are cut the weekend before Thanksgiving, while the trees from Canada are cut months earlier, he said, because the earlier arrival of winter and snow there make it difficult to access the trees.

His favorite tree is the concolor fir, which stands out from the more traditional Douglas and balsam fir trees. The concolor needles are longer and have a lighter hue, and Olsen pointed out that they are a favorite of Martha Stewart. There are still a few growing on the upper field of the property, at heights upward of 25 feet, and Olsen said that, on occasion, they will cut one down for a customer if they need a large tree. Olsen’s used to supply the 20-foot-plus tree that would reside in Amagansett Square each year.

The number of trees they sell isn’t a big factor for the Olsens, or a reason to stay in business. What they love about this time of year are the people.

“It’s the time of year when you see happy faces,” Sharon Olsen said with a smile, adding that customers who came to the farm as children will now stop in for a tree with children of their own.

“Especially now with what’s going on with COVID,” her husband added. “Everyone is having a miserable time, and to get a little joy going is always a good thing.”

Their own two grown sons will come in with their grandchildren, and have helped in various ways to sustain the operation over the years, although the pair are the only round-the-clock employees.

The workshop, the gift shop, and the hand-painted wood signage dotting the farm and the long driveway leading up to it off Route 24 are all throwbacks to a different era, and their staying power is a testament to the couple’s embrace of nostalgia. The most enduring symbol of that trademark sentimentality is a towering pine tree that shoots straight up into the sky from where it is rooted between the parking area and Walter Olsen’s childhood home. Is it mostly dead, sparse but for a few persistent shoots of greenery at the very top. Olsen looked at it with a kind of resigned acceptance, acknowledging that even though the tree probably shouldn’t still be there, it has somehow remained rooted to the original spot, where his father planted it as a tiny seedling in 1951.

“It’s a poor example of what he started,” he said, with a laugh. “But I don’t have the heart to take it down.”