‘Choose-and-Cut’ Christmas Tree Farms, Ranches Growing in Popularity : Holidays: Many sites where you can chop your own open today. Some offer low prices, others free popcorn and hayrides.

The turkey has come and gone. Can the Christmas tree be far behind?

Operators of Ventura County’s “choose-and-cut” tree farms, many of which open for the season today, hope the answer is no.

“It’s sort of a tradition in some families that right after Thanksgiving they come out and get their tree,” said J. J. Birkenshaw, co-owner of the 60-acre Holiday Forest Ranch just west of Moorpark.

“And because you can cut these trees down and immediately put them in water, they’ll last through Christmas.”

The tradition of cutting and selecting Christmas trees has grown in popularity over the years, according to the California Christmas Tree Growers Assn.

“In California, we were the first ones to do choose-and-cut farms, and now they’re all over the country,” said Dilys Batkin, manager of the association. “It’s a great family thing. People seem to really love it.”

Most of the farms open today or Saturday--by Wednesday at the latest--and will remain open daily during daylight hours through Christmas Eve.

Regardless of the location, the basic reason people visit a tree farm is obviously to select a Christmas tree. But the experience can vary widely from farm to farm, growers say.

Large farms, like Birkenshaw’s, deal in volume with competitive prices but steer clear of such amenities as free cider and hayrides offered at some of the smaller locations that market themselves by making the experience more appealing to families.

Marilyn and Dwayne Bower in 1985 bought a home and five-acre farm in Ojai that previously had been operated for decades. It was the nostalgia of some of the yearly clients that convinced the couple not to remove the Monterey pines in favor of oranges or grapefruits.

“We have some people who have been coming to (the tree farm) for 20-some years,” Marilyn Bower said. “I talked to a lady yesterday who said, ‘This’ll be our 24th year.’ ”

Customers at the Bower Tree Farm are offered free popcorn, coffee and apple cider while they browse or cut, the Bowers said, in addition to a picnic area and hayrides for the kids.

Some families meet each year at the Boardman Road ranch to share lunch or breakfast in addition to helping out with tree selection, Marilyn Bower said.

Thursel and Ralph Roatcap have owned Santa Paula Christmas Tree Farms on East Telegraph Road in Santa Paula for about 30 years, Thursel Roatcap said, and have been selling trees there for the last 24 years.

“We got into this because it’s an alternate type of farming,” she said. “We were vegetable farmers, we farmed tomatoes, broccoli, seeds for the seed companies--you name it, and we’ve probably farmed it. But we decided that it was such an up-and-down business that we needed an alternate crop, and we chose Christmas trees.”

The couple planted five acres of trees at first and now have 10 acres of Monterey pine that they are prepared to sell at $27 a tree--regardless of size.

“It’s been good to us through the years,” Roatcap said. “Generally speaking, it’s a happy time. People are happy, they come and they’re happy to come out in the woods in the tree farm and the air is usually pretty good out here, not as good as it used to be, though.”

Holiday Forest sells trees for $3.50 a foot, Birkenshaw said, a price that stayed put since the 1980s.

The price has stayed low in deference to the weak economy and competition with other growers and retail tree lots, Birkenshaw said. But Holiday Forest has remained a popular location along the Simi Valley Freeway west of Moorpark.

“You can’t go to a park or a forest and cut down a tree anymore,” she said. “So what you’re doing is you’re coming out to a forest where it’s OK to cut your tree down and once you’ve done that you have a fresh tree that will stay fresh for six weeks or longer.”

Usually too busy to worry about her family’s tree until days before Christmas, Birkenshaw cut her own tree early this year and it was up and decorated in her home by Wednesday.

She said she is already feeling the positive effects of having it there.

“When you put it in your house earlier, then you can come home to it every night and the scent of the pine stays in the house,” she said.

The key to keeping a tree fresh, Batkin said, is making sure it is given plenty of water--particularly soon after it is cut.

“When you first get a tree home, it could drink up to a gallon of water in the first day,” she said. “First off, you need to cut the stem again when you get it home and you have to keep it in water all the time and not let it dry out, because when you do it’ll seal over and won’t take the water.”

Birkenshaw also stressed the safety benefits of a fresh tree.

“A tree that is fresh just has no ability to dry out or drop needles or catch fire,” she said.