- We're gonna go with this one.
- You like that guy?
- Yeah. - Ok.
[chainsaw cutting]
- Uh oh, looka there.
Could you grab the top and support it a little bit?
- You're looking for a tree?
- Yeah, between six and seven foot tall.
- Picking the right Christmas tree
can be the biggest choice of the season.
- We specialize in more unique, big trees.
- Ken Ottman tries to make it easy.
- And it won't be hard.
[laughs]
- We try to make it so people can walk
up and down the aisles and find a tree.
- For those whose eyes are bigger than their ceiling,
he offers a measuring stick.
- If they got an eight foot ceiling,
they can find a tree that's not 10 feet.
- You're good? - Yeah. - Ok.
All right. Well, that's good.
Yeah, it's a very nice tree.
- You learn a lot of tricks of the trade
when your family has been
in the Christmas tree business for more than 70 years.
- My dad started the business in 1946 and
we've been selling trees continuously
in the Milwaukee area.
- Ken's customers have made getting one of his trees
part of their Christmas tradition.
- We have grandchildren of my father's original customers
that are coming and bringing their little kids.
So after 70 years, we've got generational loyalty.
And that's just real rewarding.
- This is the one. - This is a good one? - All right.
- While they head home to hang lights,
Ken heads back to the trailer
to help his daughter make more wreaths.
But don't feel sorry for him.
- This is the fun part of the year.
The growing of trees is nothing but hard work.
- The real work in Christmas tree farming comes in July.
- People don't have any idea.
- We're going to start in this section right here,
every other row.
- That's when Ken, his brother Steve,
his sister Leslie and their families
all gather in Door County to shear the trees.
Shearing is what makes a proper Christmas tree.
- This'll make an eight to nine foot tall tree this year.
- Ken needs to cut the leader and all the shaggy new growth
or else the tree would grow too fast and
leave space between the branches.
- That's not what the consumer wants these days.
They want a tighter, more full tree.
- Each species of pine tree has a narrow window to be sheared.
- She's done.
That's it.
- So Ken's family is sweating in the sun,
swinging sharp knives and wearing a catcher's leg guard,
just in case.
- That's all marks from missing.
[laughs]
- This land has been in Ken's family since the late 1800s.
- My great grandfather initially bought the land here.
- It wasn't always trees.
His grandparents grew cherries here.
Ken's mother grew up in Door County,
but married a painter named Herbert from Milwaukee.
- Before Christmas, nobody wanted their house painted
because the odor was so bad
that my dad was basically without work in December.
- So Herbert started selling Christmas trees,
and eventually bought the Door County farm.
- They began planting trees here
in hopes that they would be able
to supply trees for his retail sales.
- At one point Ken says there were 15,000 trees here.
And Herbert sheared them all by hand on his own.
- My dad was the one who had the fire
for growing Christmas trees.
My mom was a... a supportive participant.
[laughs]
- Ken and his siblings grew up in the Christmas tree business.
- From the day I could use a jackknife and
open up a Christmas tree,
I worked in the Christmas tree business.
- It led to his decision to become a forester and
buy two more tree farms.
His brother also owns two farms,
and his sister runs the Door County family farm
as a "choose and cut."
- It is fun.
It's the same people come year after year after year.
You get new people every year but you have your regulars.
- They worked hard at it.
This is their legacy.
That's why we keep it going.
- I don't know if it's a life's passion or a curse,
[chuckes]
but it's what we do.
- No matter how hot it gets in July,
the chill of December is just a few months away.
- They'll have to drag me
out of a Christmas tree lot by my heels.
- And Ken can't imagine
not being a part of his customers' merry Christmas.
- Merry Christmas.
- I love this.
I love this.