A. Brown & Sons Nursery offers authentic, unique Christmas tree experience

[/media-credit] Mike Brown, the crazy Christ­mas tree guy, cuts off the end of a Dou­glas Fir at one of his farms. Brown owns and oper­ates A. Brown & Sons Nurs­ery out­side Phillips­burg with his three broth­ers and, not sur­pris­ingly, is a staunch oppo­nent of arti­fi­cial Christ­mas trees. (Ryan Pev­erly photo)

By Ryan Pev­erly
rpeverly@registerherald.com

Phillips­burg– Mike Brown ani­mat­edly talked about how his nurs­ery recently lost an account with mer­chants in the Vil­lage of Arcanum. He said he’s been sell­ing Christ­mas trees to mer­chants in the vil­lage to dis­play out­side their respec­tive busi­nesses for the last 15 years. But last hol­i­day sea­son, a few bad eggs — maybe some of you read­ing this — dis­man­tled the trees branch by branch and took the lights, leav­ing a hol­i­day mess for the vil­lage to pick up.
“Need­less to say, they’re not buy­ing trees this year,” said Brown as he drove an over­sized pick-up truck from his Phillipsburg-area A. Brown & Sons Nurs­ery, which he oper­ates with his broth­ers Harry, Kenny and John, to a site where he grows acres and acres of Christ­mas trees each year.
The Brown fam­ily has oper­ated this nurs­ery for 65 years. Mike has been work­ing on it for 50 years, since age 6, when he first started sell­ing trees.
“They say fam­i­lies can’t work together. But we tol­er­ate each other. We had good par­ents, par­ents that told us we’d hate each other for a few min­utes but to get over it,” Brown said.
When Brown pulled the truck into the Christ­mas tree farm, he was quick to point out how beau­ti­ful the trees are. He isn’t lying. Rows and rows of trees stuck out like sore thumbs on this cool, mid-autumn day.
“You name it, we got it. Scotch Pine, White Pine, Aus­trian Pine, Canaan Fir, Fraser Fir, Dou­glas Fir, Con­cord Fir, two feet to twenty feet. We’re the largest Christ­mas tree lot in the state of Ohio. Nobody puts as many trees on one lot as we do,” said Brown, whose mouth races a mile a minute when you get him talk­ing, and even when you don’t. But that’s Mike Brown, the crazy Christ­mas tree guy.
“I’m not crazy, but peo­ple know me for being that way at Christ­mas. They know at Christ­mas­time I’m on some­thing. Mostly Scotch Pine sap,” Brown said, only half-joking as he wiped a sticky
sub­stance from his gloves onto his work pants.
Brown’s eccen­tric­ity could be a way to liven up a slow period, too. Win­ter isn’t the busiest or most prof­itable time for a nurs­ery, but Brown’s jester-like per­son­al­ity has kept cus­tomers com­ing back in Novem­ber and Decem­ber to pick out, cut and load the nursery’s home-grown Christ­mas trees, even if that pesky arti­fi­cial tree has put a notice­able dent in local busi­nesses such as this.
“I don’t know why peo­ple pre­fer arti­fi­cial trees. They’re not any fun. Peo­ple are just lazy now. They got lazy. They’d rather have a pre-lit tree that’s already got a stand on it. Peo­ple just don’t want to do any work. We’re a lazy soci­ety. But we’re hold­ing our own,” Brown said, chang­ing the sub­ject as quickly as he started it.
“I won’t lie. We still sell as many Christ­mas trees as we did 10 years ago. We haven’t went down (in sales), but we also haven’t went up. We’ve lev­eled out. And it’s amaz­ing we’ve lev­eled out, because we always lose some peo­ple. But we always gain new peo­ple that still value the appeal of a real tree.”
A. Brown & Sons has over 1,500 acres of nurs­ery, 200 of which are ded­i­cated to Christ­mas trees, although Brown admits they really only need about 60.
“We went from plant­ing seven-thousand trees a year to about fifteen-hundred, two-thousand. We’ve got the biggest and best trees in the state of Ohio. But peo­ple don’t want them,” said Brown, who’s always ready to talk tan­gen­tially.
“They may go buy a real tree, but it might not be local. A lot of places sell trees from Michi­gan that were cut sev­eral weeks before they buy it. We don’t. We just started cut­ting (it’s mid-November), and we cut as the sea­son goes on, all the way up to the 21st of Decem­ber. My trees are so fresh you’ll have to slap them.”
They are fresh, no doubt about it. Brown cut off the end of a Dou­glas Fir and the smell from the wood was sweet and citrus-like (and that smell has stayed, nearly three weeks later). He does this for all his cus­tomers — cuts the end off — and sug­gests they drill a hole in the tree’s cir­cu­lar end and use it as an orna­ment to com­mem­o­rate the year. A memento of sorts.
“If you had a baby, put their name and birth­day on it, Christ­mas 2012. If you got mar­ried, put your anniver­sary date on it, Christ­mas 2012,” Brown said. “I cut these for peo­ple all the time, and they love it. I tell them if they save it for fifty years, it’s a free tree when they bring it back and show it. I have one woman who’s had one for forty-four years. She’s almost there.”
Those are the type of peo­ple Brown likes and wants as cus­tomers — peo­ple that buy once and come back each sea­son.
“A lot of our cus­tomers are peo­ple who have been buy­ing from us for years. It may be a gen­er­a­tional thing. Peo­ple come from Cincin­nati, from Louisville. They won’t by any tree other than the types we grow. There’s not much loy­alty like that any­more. Peo­ple don’t sup­port small busi­nesses,” Brown said.
“When we planted Christ­mas trees twenty years ago things were great. But in the last five years we had to cut down. I love these peo­ple who think they’re going to get rich sell­ing Christ­mas trees. We’re busy for two week­ends and peo­ple see that and say they can plant them and sell them, too. Then they lose their butts. We’re an estab­lished busi­ness, an estab­lished nurs­ery. We don’t rip peo­ple off. We’ll give you the best deal in town on a good tree.”
The prices are rea­son­able (the cheap­est tree is $15), so if, as Brown said, you’re look­ing for an authen­tic, tra­di­tional way to cel­e­brate Christ­mas, A. Brown & Sons’ Christ­mas tree lot at 7701 Salem Ave. in Clay­ton and on Rock Ridge Road in Pre­ble County is open now. You can get real wreaths and rop­ing there, too, hand­made fresh daily.
“Try a live one. Get that expe­ri­ence. It’ll be great. They smell nice. And it’s a liv­ing thing. Give it some water. It’ll live,” Brown said. “I don’t under­stand why any­one would want an arti­fi­cial tree from China in their house. It’s painted. There’s lead in it. You’re breath­ing that in. That’s not good for you. That’s not good for any­one.”
That’s Mike Brown, the crazy Christ­mas tree guy.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Dec 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.