'Tis the season

The company purchases evergreen tips from gatherers who scout private and public forests, including the nearby Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota require special use permits for collecting on public lands. In 1999 alone, 780 tons of boughs valued at $22,175 were cut legally from the forest.

Winter Woods is a high profile wreath-maker in northern Wisconsin, but many other “microenterprises” also handcraft wreaths for extra cash. About 1,200 tons of pine boughs become holiday decorations each year, according to the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association. While most materials used by Winter Woods come from local forests, some gatherers also supply materials from California, Oregon, Montana and Florida. The company also imports some pine cones from Canada, China, Italy and Honduras to offer a full range of sizes.

Winter Woods cooperates with the U.S. Forest Service, particularly since its president and founder once worked for the federal agency. Stephen Lewis started Winter Woods in a cabin in 1976 to earn extra money. He and his wife Sandy moved to southern Wisconsin 11 years later, but decided to expand the Glidden business beyond the 10-week wreath-making season.

Three divisions now ensure year-round operation. The Evergreens division continues to produce a variety of fresh holiday wreaths, door swags, garlands and cemetery decorations. The Forest Naturals division packages pine cones, moss, twigs, driftwood and other natural decorative items for the floral and craft industries. The third division, Northern Lights, uses pine cones unsuitable for crafts or wreaths to create gift baskets of fire starters, waxed cones and specially dipped cones that burn in different colors.

Northern Lights has contributed more than $1 million in sales over the last three years, mainly due to a direct distribution agreement with Minneapolis-based Target Stores. Northern Lights produces about 40 percent of the company’s revenues with Evergreens and Forest Naturals each bringing in about 30 percent, Schmocker said.

The company employs 35 full-time workers and up to 130 part-time and seasonal workers during the peak late autumn period. No longer housed in a northwoods cabin, the operation includes two production buildings and five warehouses totaling 62,000 square feet.

That scale of operation hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Ashland Area Development Corp. named Winter Woods its 2001 Business of the Year. “We were surprised,” said Schmocker of the award. “We’re a non-traditional employer with an unusual niche, so getting credibility is hard. It’s nice to get the recognition.”

Meanwhile in Minnesota, John Mickman, co-owner of Ham Lake’s Mickman Brothers, Inc., estimates wreath-making has become a $20-million-a-year industry in the state. Mickman Brothers alone uses about 2,000 tons of boughs every year, making the company an industry leader.

“We’ve been fortunate to develop good relationships with large landowners, such as Hibbing Taconite and Blandin Paper,” said Mickman. “We send in pickers before these companies clear-cut an area. The pickers bring out hundreds of tons of boughs that normally would have been stomped into the ground during the clear-cutting.”

Mickman Brothers manages and monitors the harvest for the landowners and pays a stumpage fee based on tonnage, he said.

Busy Christmas tree farms

As October settles in, Wisconsin Christmas tree farmers sweep out their sheds and sharpen their cutting tools. The wholesale harvest usually starts the last weekend in October on the Treml Tree Farm in Butternut. Owners Mike and Marge Treml tend 30 acres of trees, working with a crew of seven to 10 workers to cut and bale 2,000 to 2,500 trees each year. Wholesalers buy about 75 percent of the crop. The Tremls sell the remaining trees to area residents and visitors — usually hunters stopping for their trees as they head back to Illinois or even Florida.

They prices each tree by height and appearance, averaging about $18 retail per tree. Marge Treml also started a wreath business in 1993 to boost retail sales.

“It’s getting more competitive,” she said of the tree industry.

Virginia Mountford, executive secretary for the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers, said more states have begun growing trees in the last 15 years, increasing supply. Wisconsin ranks No. 5 in the nation for Christmas tree production with some 600 growers generating annual sales topping $42.5 million.

More growers are running their retail lots like the Tremls, Mountford said. She also noted that a few larger growers have downsized their operations because of the intensive year-round labor required, and difficulty marketing the product. Still, the industry has remained fairly consistent through economic downturns and provides a long-term source of income in rural areas.

Interestingly, mail-order sales of trees have gained strength. The National Christmas Tree Association reports about 330,000 trees are sold online or from catalogs and shipped mail-order each year.

Winery focuses on growth

The White Winter Winery overlooking U.S. 2 in Iron River, also uses the Web as an integral tool, especially for the holiday season. Jonathan Hamilton owns the mead, or honey-wine, business with his wife Kim. He said the company’s web site www.whitewinter.com was “definitely a positive addition to our business. Last year, it really saved us when everything slowed down for retailers,” he said.

White Winter Winery started selling online only four years ago. “It started slow. We don’t have a major budget for pushing it,” Hamilton said. “(Marketing) is a challenge for any small business, especially one with a unique product like ours. Now, we probably take in 15 to 20 percent of our gross sales yearly from the Web.”

Hamilton expects to exceed $100,000 in sales this year. “We’re very small, but we’ve grown 5 to 20 percent every year except 1997,” he said.

Hamilton started keeping bees as a hobby 18 years ago. “Pretty soon, we were doing 300 to 600 pounds of honey a year,” he said.

After two years of mead-making research, the Hamiltons took the leap to start White Winter Winery with Mark and Nancy Rooney in 1996. About two years later, the Rooneys pulled out. Now there are 11 passive shareholders in addition to the Hamiltons.

Last year, Hamilton quit his job at Memorial Medical Center in Ashland to work at his winery full time. He’s already seen the wholesale business climb to two and half times last year’s volume, and retail sales are up, too. A deal with All Saints Brand of Roseville, MN, will help open distribution there. Hamilton also is targeting corporate sales, including personalized labels. Already, he has loyal holiday business shoppers. An insurance salesman stops each November to buy two cases for his customers.

So far, the holiday sales spike from mid-November to mid-December hasn’t been as significant as the summer vacation season. “Between June 1 and August 31, we do about 75 percent of our business,” Hamilton said. Winery sales slow down from January to May, as do most liquor sales. “Even so, January through May this year was better than the same period last year. And the summer was fantastic,” he said. “Still, we have a lot of room to make up.”

The company lost sales when an April 1, 2000 fire at the South Shore Brewery in Ashland destroyed the winery’s bulk stock for its malted mead ale, called Oak Brackett. Four days later, Hamilton learned his Oak Brackett was one of the top three winners in the “specialty honey lagers or ales” category in the prestigious World Beer Cup 2000 competition. In June, the winery took home a bronze medal from ceremonies in New York — for a brew that basically no longer existed.

Insurance covered the actual loss of about $2,800. But Hamilton thinks potential retail sales for his award-winning brew could have reached at least $26,000 by the last season’s end.

Wisconsin law prohibits wineries from producing malt-based products, and Hamilton is so committed to the South Shore Brewery relationship that he waited until it reopened in May to brew his Oak Brackett there once again.

The brewery connection is one of several White Winter Winery local vendor relationships. Most of the fruit and honey it uses come from farms within a 60-mile radius. “(Wisconsin) is one of the top 10 honey producers. Why not use what’s here?” he said.

With consistent growth and international recognition for his brews, Hamilton feels confident about the winery’s future. “Our biggest hold up now is capital. We’re looking for serious investors,” he added.

Forest managers balance demand for resources

Wildcrafters sell their collections to more places than Winter Woods, Mickman Brothers or Minnesota Wild® during this time of year. In fact, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in both Minnesota and Wisconsin buy seeds from local gatherers.

The 132-acre Hayward Nursery, one of three owned and operated by the Wisconsin DNR, extracts and stores seeds to sow more than 20 million seedlings each year. The majority of the seeds come from Wisconsin’s own forests, gathered and sold to the DNR by local citizens.

Marie Zellmer at the Hayward State Tree Nursery said retirees and unemployed workers account for most of the gatherers.

She also said the availability of seeds seems to determine the number of collectors, rather than the relative strength of the economy.

For example, a large acorn crop last year attracted several new vendors. Bumper crops occur only every three to five years, however, and those people may not be back again.

The state send payments for seeds, and while Zellmer couldn’t provide a specific example, she said a few checks have been “up into thousands of dollars.”

It leaves forest managers balancing ecological and economic priorities. Countless individuals earn supplemental or subsistence income from collecting — infusing rural economies with dollars during the key holiday season. Michael Demchik, an agroforest management extension educator for the University of Minnesota Extension Service in Staples, MN, reported in August that a quarter of the farmland owners he surveyed in northern Minnesota were earning money from natural resources products.

Mike Reichenbach, forest economic development educator at the University of Minnesota’s Cloquet Forestry Center, agrees. “People rely on extra income from natural resources,” he said. For many, it’s more than a hobby, but less than a fulltime living, and for some, if “prices aren’t high enough, they’ll go fishing” instead, he said.

Reichenbach said non-traditional uses, such as birch bark applications developed by the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, are important to monitor, too. “If (birch bark) takes off, that certainly has implications on forestry management,” he said.

Several studies have found it difficult to pinpoint the number of gatherers, the economic contribution of wildcrafting or the ecological impact of harvesting non-timber specialty products. Catherine Mater called wildcrafting the “invisible livelihood” in her 1993 market research study on non-timber forest products.

Another 1993 study released by the U.S. Forest Service concluded many rural communities could seize economic opportunities through innovative approaches to natural resource conservation, management, and utilization. The report focused heavily on aromatics, berries and wild fruits, cones and seeds, forest botanicals, honey, mushrooms, syrup, and weaving and dyeing materials.

Since then, the national fervor for natural dietary supplements has skyrocketed. Populations of ginseng and goldenseal, both native to the region, have severely diminished as pickers cashed in on the craze. Chequamegon and Nicolet National Forest officials also note increased demand from Native Americans for forest products long part of their culture.

A consortium of Minnesota pickers, buyers and representatives from public and private lands formed the loosely organized Balsam Bough Partnership to wrestle with these industry issues and promote educational programs. The Sustainable Forests Education Cooperative, established in 1998, also coordinates the focus of private industry and government agencies on productivity and forest management topics.

The idea is to make sure the forests stay healthy — and will support companies big and small depending on that resource.

Meanwhile for some of these smaller businesses, the changing colors in those forests are starting to look a lot like Christmas.