Taylors Getting a North Carolina Feel

In 1998, Cayenne Kruse, a landscape expert who works seasonally at a Christmas tree lot on Wade Hampton Boulevard, used to sell 1,000 trees every holiday season. 

Last year, Kruse said, the site he works near the at the intersection with Edwards Road sold under 300 trees — a fact he attributes to a faltering economy, rise in artificial tree use and of course, rising competition. 

Whereas the tree stand Kruse mans used to represent the closest and most reasonable option for many Taylors residents when it came to picking out a Christmas tree, now there are at least six such sites along Wade Hampton Boulevard from Greenville, through Taylors and into Greer. 

Kruse works seasonally for the family of the late Ervin Booth of Glenville, NC — a small blip on the map somewhere north of Cashiers amid the wilderness of the Nantahala National Forest. Kruse and other seasonal workers ship Frasier Firs from the highlands of North Carolina to the Upstate every year for the first three weeks of December, and when customers may see the trees as mere decorations, Kruse knows what it has taken to get the product to where it is. 

"There trees are grown from seed, which is a process that once you sprout the seed, it takes about eight years for a fir to get about this big," he explained, holding his two hands a matter of a few inches apart. 

"Then they go from the nursery to the field, where eventually you'll see the trees we have here. So you're looking at 16-year-old trees."

About a half-mile down the road, trees from Sturgill Tree Farm in West Jefferson, NC, are selling their harvest near on Wade Hampton. Josh Johnson, a tree farm worker who has been working for Charles Sturgill's business for about seven years, said that the Sturgill family's Taylors location sells between 600 and 700 trees a year. 

For some, the tree business is big business. Sturgill Farms even boasts a Facebook page and a web site to promote their product. Some businesses that don't even specialize in tree sales take on some of the special holiday stock, such as big name stores like Walmart. Near the two roadside tree sites is garden center also sells trees originally grown at the Furchess Evergreens farm in West Jefferson, said Country Boy's Owner Allen Walcher. 

"These are all farm-raised trees," Walcher said. "The majority of Christmas trees in the market are not woodland trees." 

Kruse and Walcher both hailed the trees as renewable resources, capable of being easily replaced by subsequent harvests. The NC Christmas Tree Association also reports that real Christmas trees are a recyclable resource, as most trees are chipped into biodegradable mulch after their lives as holiday decorations. 

Most trees are Taylors-area tree sites range from $25 to $75.