Jordan Beck | Daily Press Kindergartners from North Central Area Schools bring back a tree their class picked out while visiting Treichel’s Trees in Carney Thursday.

CARNEY — Now that the holiday season has begun, many people in the area have been buying Christmas trees and other seasonal decorations. Eric Treichel, who co-owns Treichel’s Trees with his wife, Kitty Treichel, said business at the Carney tree farm has been strong so far this year.

“Actually, we’re probably a little bit ahead of our normal pace,” he said.

He expects the next few days — along with the following weekend — to mark the peak of business at Treichel’s Trees this year.

“This weekend’s going to be our busiest (weekend),” Eric said.

Kitty said Treichel’s Trees tries to provide a personal touch for all of its visitors.

“Many of our customers call this ‘the Hallmark experience,'” she said.

According to Eric, he and Kitty have been growing trees at their farm for more than 40 years.

“When we bought the place, the people who had it were doing trees,” he said. The Treichels decided to continue growing trees, and have been doing so ever since.

Today, Treichel’s Trees is growing 50,000 trees. A wide variety of trees are grown at the farm, including balsam firs, white spruce, blue spruce, Fraser firs and concolor firs, among others.

“We have just about everything that can be grown around here,” Eric said.

Treichel’s Trees’ strongest-selling trees are balsam firs, Kitty said. However, she noted that this honor would go to concolor firs if the farm could meet demand for these unique trees.

“They’re actually long-needled and blue, and they smell like oranges,” she said.

The farm also sells handmade wreaths.

“People come for the unique, and that is what I turn out,” Kitty said. These wreaths are available in many different shapes and sizes, and are each decorated differently.

A great deal of precipitation fell in the area in 2018, Eric said.

“We had ample rain this year — the trees are healthy. They should last a long time this year,” he said.

Kitty encouraged people who plan to buy live Christmas trees this year to give their trees’ trunks a fresh cut and put them into water as soon as possible to keep them hydrated.

“If they keep it watered — that is key — they won’t lose their needles,” she said.

Local students (primarily kindergartners) visit Treichel’s Trees twice each year.

“We have the North Central and Carney kids come,” Eric said, adding that he and Kitty would be happy to accommodate other schools interested in having young students visit the farm.

During the holiday season, students come to Treichel’s Trees to pick out a Christmas tree for their class. The following spring, they return to the farm to see how trees are planted.

“It’s so important to be stewards of the earth now,” Kitty said of the latter visit’s significance.

Kindergartners from North Central Area Schools visited Treichel’s Trees Thursday. Their teacher, Trisha Hongisto, said this visit is always popular with her students.

“They’ve been doing this for many, many years, and it’s something they always look forward to,” she said.

Eric said he and Kitty have no plans to stop running Treichel’s Trees.

“We’re getting up there in years, but we’re probably going to do it till the day we die, God willing,” he said.

Treichel’s Trees is located at W3277 36 1/2 Mile Rd., Carney. For more information, visit www.treichelstrees.com, call 906-497-5394 or find “Treichel’s Trees” on Facebook.