ROTHBURY — Fischer Trees, located on Arthur Road in Rothbury, will mark the end of an era this season, as it will close its doors after decades of growing Christmas trees for families near and far.
Diane Fischer, longtime farm manager Otho “Os” Payne and Fischer’s family have run the farm the last couple of seasons. Previously, Diane’s late brother Glen and his wife Linda were in charge; Diane said the beginnings of the business date to the Fischer patriarch, Henry, planting a batch of trees around the time Glen was born in 1943. Glen spent years planting trees and preparing to sunset his involvement with the business when he turned 80, but passed away in October 2022, three months before his 80th birthday.
Glen and his wife had no children, and no other Fischers have the passion it takes to continue such an endeavor. Late in his life, Glen explored several possible succession plans for the tree business, but “nothing seemed to work out quite right,” Diane said.
“The succession planning is to leave the farm for the family, and let nature take over,” Diane added.
The Fischer farm is a state-recognized Centennial Farm, a title given to any farm in Michigan that has farmed continuously for over a century and stayed within the same family. Diane’s great-grandfather, Johann Fischer, started the farm in 1892, taking over the land after the white pine trees there had been cut down to help rebuild Chicago following the great fire of 1871. The farm, which grew all manner of food and raised cows as well, continued to grow, and the Fischer family got in business doing “victory gardens,” which were wartime gardens during both World War I and World War II. This led to the Fischers getting involved in landscaping, which eventually morphed into the Christmas tree business.
“Supposedly, someone came and said, ‘Could we cut down one of those?’ So that started the Christmas tree (business),” Fischer said.
That kind of work meshed well with the skill set of Henry Fischer, “a tinkerer” as Diane puts it. Henry himself built much of the equipment the family used to run the business.
At its peak, Fischer Trees planted thousands of trees per year on its 280 acres - Diane said they take about 20 years to grow to full height - and customers came from all over to pick out their perfect Christmas tree. No doubt the thrill of seeking out a tree the old-fashioned way was part of what drew so many to the farm over the years, but so too were the Fischers’ reasonable prices. Last year the Fischers charged $30 for trees up to six feet tall; any tree taller than that cost $5 per foot.
There was also a wholesale business, with Fischer Trees shipping statewide and even beyond; Diane recalled Texas, Iowa and the Chicago area being regular destinations for the Fischers’ product. The farm sold handmade wreaths made by Otho’s wife Mary; Diane credits her with making the best wreaths in the country.
Diane, a professor at Michigan State, came north for the busy weekends on the farm to help out during the tree farm’s peak, and as a kid her daughter, Amy Rusch, turned the trip into her own business opportunity, selling hot chocolate and cookies to keep customers warm.
Glen’s return to the farm in 1972 was something of a surprise to his dad Henry. Glen earned a doctorate in high energy physics from the University of Wisconsin and did research work there, and his wife Linda was a microbiologist, so both seemed to have bigger things in their future than the family farm. Yet Glen felt the pull to come home, and so he did, taking over operations.
“He approached my parents and he came and took over the farm with his wife,” Diane said. “At that point, I went off to college. At one time, they planted 20,000 trees a year, and they shipped seven to eight semis (worth of trees).”
The farm has no shortage of variety, with different fields for different species of tree. As part of Bruce’s, and later Glen’s, tinkering, the farm has a field of various concolor fir trees in a variety of combinations, known on the farm as the “exotics.” The long-running family joke, Payne said, is that the trees out there are “very promiscuous” and have created trees of various color, scent and look.
Some 20 years ago, Glen stopped planting new trees as part of the plan to sunset the business, but many trees still exist on the property, and Payne, who’s been with the family nearly 30 years, still takes care of them.
Payne’s involvement with the business began through Mary. Otho, who said he goes by “Os” because growing up, no one could pronounce his first name correctly, joined later on.
Os joked that he stuck around so long because Glen was “basically the only one that kept me employed” - he worked at the Montague tannery and later a foundry in Muskegon before both closed up shop - but his work has been instrumental in keeping the business alive, especially the past couple of years; Diane said with a smile that Payne knows far more than she does about taking care of trees. Payne trims the trees, fertilizes the soil, cuts out stumps and tends to the fields so the trees can grow properly. Since Glen’s passing, he’s also taken on a larger role in customer service, which he enjoys, and it gives him a chance to get a face to face look at some of the folks who have spent decades choosing their tree from the farm.
“Everybody’s chatty,” Payne smiled. “It’s fun talking to the people coming from all over. People used to come from Kentucky and West Virginia...(These were people whose) grandparents used to come. One lady said she came when she was a kid, and now she’s bringing her grandchildren.”
Diane and her husband John Saling, who’s from Whitehall, moved to the family farm to help continue operations around the time of Glen’s passing, and they wanted to announce a final season ahead of time so those interested could get their Christmas tree from the farm one last time. The farm will be open for Christmas tree shoppers the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving, Nov. 23, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Friday-Sunday after Thanksgiving; Thursday, Dec. 5 from 3-5 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 7-8, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
There obviously aren’t as many trees on the farm as there once were, but Diane said “it’s been a good growing year,” and there should be enough good trees available to offer families a good choice this winter.
“We just want to express our gratitude and our joy for our customers over the years,” Diane said. “We feel like we have a relationship with a lot of them. The magic of Christmas for us has been magnified for what we can do for the people that find the perfect tree for their house. That’s why we’re stopping, because they aren’t going to be able to find the perfect tree. There are not as many choices.”
Fischer will continue taking care of the land once the business is closed - Glen’s wife Linda still lives in the house adjacent to the tree fields, while Diane lives in the house a few hundred feet east - and may even plant a few trees for old time’s sake. The remaining trees will still stand, a legacy of a decades-long family business that served so many so well.
