The life of a Christmas tree begins with a family well before the year in which it is purchased and ends bringing joy to another family. While enjoying their beauty and fragrance in December, it may be easy to overlook the years of nurturing and individual attention that each tree receives in order to be perfect for the family that selects it.
“It’s a crazy business,” said Wayne Ayres, owner of Roan Valley Tree Farm. “We always try to grow a really nice tree, and you get to the point that you actually know a tree just by looking at it. Then you get to see kids get excited about it, and it makes you feel good at a time of year when everyone is celebrating.”
For the Ayres family, it’s all about Christmas trees. Wayne and his sons, John and Steve, and even their sons, Jonathon, Austin and Eli, work together to develop the farm and to nurture the trees. Christmas tree farming involves thorough planning and commitment, as it typically takes more than a decade for a tree to be ready for harvest. Christmas tree farms also tend to be a family business.
“It’s a pretty new business for this part of the world,” said Ayres. “Nobody had even thought of growing a Christmas tree for wholesale 50 years ago.”
It is an industry that only began in America in the 20th century, but Ayres’ family was one of its pioneers.
“My Dad was the first in the family, the first in Mitchell County (North Carolina) and one of the first in the whole state,” said Ayres. “It all started right there.”
His father planted the first tree in 1958. Ayres began helping him at age 18 and started his own business, Roan Valley Tree Farm, in 1966.
The Mitchell County farm is on 5,0000 acres of land that has been in his family since before his great-great-grandfather inherited it in 1825. He worked there until opening a new location at 440 Okolona Road 25 years ago.
The Okolona farm is 36 acres, which currently has 15 planted acres with 22,000 trees.

He believes he is the only one in the area that sells two of his varieties: the Korean fir and the citrus-scented Concolor fir.

“If they get the Concolor, that’s all they’ll ever want,” said Ayres.
Families can also choose from Canaan fir, Nordman fir, Grand fir, Norway Spruce, Colorado Blue Spruce and hemlock.
Roan Valley offers thousands of choose and cut trees because Ayres believes it is important for families to come out and run through the field and select a tree together.
They offer precut trees throughout the region as well. Before opening the Okolona location, he had took precut trees to a lot in Johnson City and Kingsport. Once he closed those in favor of offering choose and cuts off Okolona, he said most of his clients began coming to the farm.
“We have a reputation for producing excellent trees,” said Ayres, and his record supports the statement.
They provided the tree to The White House in 1993 and also provide a Concolor fir to the Tennessee Governor annually. They won the National Christmas Tree contest in 1992 in Spokane, Washington, which qualified them to supply the White House its tree. Ayres formerly sat on the board of the National Christmas Tree Association.
Not only are his trees famous, they have a national demand. He ships all the way to Texas and California and said he used to ship to Bermuda until about five years ago.
They harvest between 200 and 250 trees on an average day and ship thousands around the country. To meet demands, they work almost every day of the season despite inclement weather.
“The weather doesn’t matter — you have about three weeks to make it or break it,” Ayres said.
Judging by the distance people travel for their trees, it is safe to say they are “making it.”
One man traveled this season all the way from Athens, Ga., which Ayres said was ”because he heard that Wayne Ayres was famous, and he wanted to see the trees for himself.”
“Boy, did that make my head big,” Ayres said through laughter. “They come from all over.”
Though Ayres takes great pride in his work, he is anything but proud. He is nearing 80 years old and works hard in every season with his family, including his grandchildren. The year-round farm operation is something that only a tree-farming family truly understands.
“People think you plant and come back later and have a tree, but we do much more than that,” said Ayres.
They plant in the Spring and then fertilize and spray herbicides and pesticides and ward off varmints. They also grow blueberries, grapes, peaches, apples and pears and operate the farm-to-table Old Barn Restaurant.
As families search for the perfect tree, they pass from field to field and through different varieties, scents and ages of trees.
Ayres pointed to a hill of Fraser firs that are ready to cut and said, “That’s the next field we’re going to turn them loose in.”
The ready-to-cut trees have typically been in the field for eight to 10 years, but Ayres said they plant theirs about four years before they are put in the field.
The seed is sent to a warehouser in Washington D.C., and when they come back, they are four to seven inches tall. They go in the field at between 12 and 18 inches and are ready to cut between six and 12 feet.
Most of Ayres fields are fairly uniform in height for each age group, though growth patterns vary by species.
One particularly unique species that he said no one in this area grows is the Korean fir. He grows them for their extraordinary fragrance, strong needles and beautiful branches.
Some of the trees — typically white pines — are sheered for garlands or wreaths. One woman in Spruce Pine makes about 1,500 Fraser fir boughs each year from Ayres’ trees.
About ten people work with the Ayres family in harvest season to help with cutting, bailing, sheering, assisting customers and loading.
“Our hope is that the way we prepare the tree for a family, they can go home and set it up with the stand already attached and begin decorating,” he said.
As advice to the family that takes home his trees, Ayres advises to never let the tree run out of water, because once it does, rosin will seal the cut and it will not take any more water.
For more information on the Roan Valley farm, call 828-688-2675. Additional Carter County Christmas tree farms are Ripshin Tree Farm at 145 Paul Smith Road, available at (423) 725-2328, and Turkey Knob Tree Farm at 120 Teaberry Road, or by phone at (423) 772-0168.