Tree farm tradition

Life on a Christmas tree farm wasn't anything new to Tammy Aissen when she and her husband, Jeff, bought their 70-acre spread in Luxemburg, Wisconsin back in 1990. In fact, she is a third-generation tree farmer. Her grandfather started the family trend in the 1960s in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. "My grandpa started on some 500 acres," she says, "very large scale." Back then, the children, including Tammy, were responsible for sweeping all of the pine needles out of the tree shop.

Those seasons spent working at the family shop birthed in Tammy the desire to start her own farm, but Jeff wasn't as immediately enthused, enjoying a successful career as a mechanical engineer. "It was a big dream of mine, and Jeff just went along," she says.

They ultimately decided to buy a rough patch of overgrown land to mold into their tree farm. "It was an abandoned farm and all the acreage was overgrown with weeds and brush," Jeff says. They cleared the land and planted their first 4,000 Black Hills spruce and balsam fir trees in 1991.

Being the extended process that this is -- it takes about 10 to 12 years for a Chrismas tree to grow to an acceptable 9 feet tall -- the Aissens lived in an apartment and worked at the family retail lot during the holidays as they waited for their crop to grow. They eventually built a new home on the property and shifted their life to the farm, working with the trees and building their business. And in the meantime, Jeff's priorities began to change.

"While working as a mechanical engineer, I was on the road constantly and I was a stranger to my daughter," he says. "Life is too short. I was missing being a part of my daughter's life growing up, and you can't get that back. So Tammy and I decided to make the Christmas tree farm a full-time thing for the whole family."