Sans snow, we in the Coachella Valley have other ways of knowing it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. One telltale sign is the transformation of empty lots across the Coachella Valley into small forests of fresh evergreens. This delightful metamorphosis is made possible by folks like the Aerni family, who have brought farm-grown Christmas trees to Indian Wells and Cathedral City for more than 60 years.
Rosa Aerni grew up on the farm in Oregon. “When I was very little, we didn’t have a lot of work here at this time of year,” she recalls. “So we cut down some of the smaller timber trees and took them down to [the desert]. It slowly graduated into a business.” She and her husband, Butch Aerni, have continued this legacy, passing the trade down to their four children.
We caught up with Rosa and Butch to learn about their story.
Rosa and Butch Aerni.
Growing up on a Christmas tree farm sounds like a Hallmark movie, but it must be tough work. What’s a typical day during harvest season?
Rosa: Last year, it snowed on us. The men have to carry big trees. You only get paid once a year, and you put out a lot of money in the meantime. You’re fertilizing, cutting, trimming — tons and tons of work. Every year, we say, “We’re not doing this again,” because it’s so hard, but you can see we’ve been doing it since I was 3. The good weather and the nice people — that’s what we come for.
Tell us more about the trees we buy at Christmastime in the desert. How old are they? What variety?
Butch: When we plant the tree, it’s 2 years old. We have some 14- or 15-footers that are 22 years old when we take them down, but the average tree is about 7 or 8 years old before it gets to the height we need. The Cadillac of Christmas trees is the noble fir. It’s a very fragrant tree, and it’s very durable. It lasts a long time.
How can customers make their tree last as long as possible?
Butch: We always freshen the cut. You know how when you cut yourself, you scab up? Well, Christmas trees do the same thing. So when they leave our lot, we put a fresh cut [on the trunk] and tell people the tree needs to be in water within an hour.
