By James V. Horrigan
Staff Writer
Everyone knows the day after Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday shopping season, but for many people it also kicks off the Christmas tree season.
Jim and Nancy Pearson of Beech Ridge Farm in Scarborough have been growing Christmas trees on a portion of their 160-acre farm on Beech Ridge Road since 1987. It took 10 years however before the first trees were large enough to sell.
“They don’t all grow at the same rate,” Jim Pearson, 70, said. “I think we sold a dozen or so to friends and neighbors the first year.”
Since then the amount of trees sold has increased to an average of about 1,000 per year.
“Sometimes we go a little bit over, sometimes a bit under,” Jim Pearson said. “At the peak of our performance we had about 20,000 trees. Now we’re down to probably 12,000. We have close to 20 acres in trees.”
For many people, a yearly trek to Beech Ridge Farm has become a tradition looked forward to by all members of the family. For Scarborough residents Greg and Nancy Frizzle and their four children, Zach, 14, Nick, 10, Rachel, 4 and Matthew 2, it’s a ritual performed every year on the same day.
“We always come here on the day after Thanksgiving,” Nancy Frizzle said. “We like to come out early because we want a big tree.”
But whether you want a big tree or a little tree, if you wait too long you won’t find any. At some point, Pearson said, they have to stop the cutting or else there won’t be any trees left for next year.
“Last year we had to close on Dec. 14; we ran out of trees,” he said.
“We have certain sections that we say we have to save these trees for next year,” said Jim Pearson’s daughter Mary, 42. “But right now the majority of the farm is open, since they’re planted here there and everywhere.”
Her father calls it interplanting.
“We have a lot of little trees amid the big trees,” Jim Pearson said.
Because the sun sets so early between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the majority of trees are cut on weekends. But Jim Pearson has had to deal with people in years past who are willing to wander around in the dark looking for their tree.
“We had to terminate that because of insurance reasons. You can’t find a Christmas tree with a flashlight,” he said.
Although some families, like the Frizzles, want to get their tree as early as possible, Jim Pearson said others wait for the right opportunity.
“If we get an inch or two of snow, people go nuts. They think it’s Currier & Ives,” he said.
Part of that attraction is the ride in a sleigh or converted haywagon back to the parking lot. Most people prefer the former, but conditions don’t always allow it.
“If it gets terribly, terribly muddy we can’t take the sleigh out,” Jim Pearson said. People are disappointed when they can’t ride in the sleigh – which, like the haywagon, is towed by a tractor driven by Mary Pearson.
“But they’ll all sit there on the trailer and sing Christmas carols anyway,” Jim Pearson said. When they get back to the barn, free cups of hot chocolate await, along with an army of volunteers to show the best way to secure the tree and prepare it for transport.
It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to cut down a tree – with a saw provided by the farm – but different people take longer to choose one. The Frizzle family had been checking out trees for close to an hour before deciding on one they liked – or liked well enough.
”We’re settling on this tree because the kids are all tired and the younger ones are starting to get cranky,” Nancy Frizzle said.
Other folks are seized by indecision and have trouble settling on any tree.
“The funny thing is that everybody will find the perfect tree, then they’ll walk beyond it thinking there’s got to be a better one farther out in the pasture,” said Mary Pearson.
Her father has many similar stories.
“We had a lady here about four or five years ago who looked at every single tree. And that’s a helluva lot of walking. Finally she said, ‘Well, it’s a toss up between this one and that one.’ The guy that was with her, you could tell he wasn’t real, real happy, so I said, ‘Why don’t you make a great, big hack into that tree?’ And he did. So I said ‘There, that’s your tree,’” Jim Pearson said.
Both Jim Mary Pearson know that in certain circumstances a Christmas tree can be chosen and cut in record time.
“If there’s a football game on, and it’s halftime? They can get a tree and be out of here in two-and-a-half minutes,” Mary Pearson said with a laugh.
No matter the size, or how long you take choosing it, all the trees at Beech Ridge Farm cost $40.
But will a tree taken home the day after Thanksgiving actually last until Christmas?
Absolutely, said Jim Pearson, provided it is taken care of correctly.
“Cut a wafer off the bottom, get it in the water and keep it in the water,” he told Melissa Nadeau of Saco and Jane Collette of Old Orchard Beach, who had just cut down a Balsam fir.
“This was our first time here,” Collette said. “It was a wonderful experience. The trees are beautiful.”
 Pearson said the secret to keeping a tree is a fresh cut before you put it up.
“The tree will heal over, just like a cut on your hand, and that will stop it from drinking. That’s lesson number one,” he said.
The Frizzle family learned lesson number two the hard way.
“We bring our own blanket because we know it can get muddy,” she said.
Lesson number three is a little hard to grasp. If you’ve always thought about cutting down your own Christmas tree, when it comes to the Beech Ridge Farm experience, you better get it while you can. The farm might not be around forever.
“We’re getting to an age when we aren’t going to be replanting any more,” said Jim Pearson.
“We’re weighing whether the next generation of Pearsons are going to get into it.”
Although his daughter Mary Pearson seems like a constant presence amid the acres of balsam firs, blue Colorado spruce and Canaan firs, her career is in law enforcement as a Scarborough police sergeant.
Her brother Robert, Jim and Nancy Pearson’s other child, is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, currently stationed in Jacksonville, Fla. Although he is scheduled to be assigned to Brunswick Naval Air Station next June, the military is his life, his father said.
For more information, visit the farm Web site at www.beechridgefarm.com, or call 839-4098.