Hey everybody its Jackson from MMB Christmas Trees

It’s Thursday July 16^th, beautiful day in East Hereford

We’re on the Christmas Tree farm today, the family farm

Today we’re going to talk about shearing Christmas Trees and how do it and why

And just in case you didn’t know, not every single Christmas Tree grows to have its natural form

Whether it be a Balsam fir or a Frasier fir or a Norman Fir, they don’t grow to have the one tip in the traditional Christmas tree look to it

This tree right here was sheared within the last 12 months but as you can see just in the last 12 months this tree has grown a lot

You can see going on at the top it already has about six different heads going on it’s pretty uneven if you look at it from the sides

But there’s a solution to that, we call it the sword and the scissors

We keep it old school at MMB and this is how you shear the tree

This is the way my Uncle taught me

So looking at the tree from top to bottom the first thing you wanna do is create one single tip at the top for that perfect ornament for the perfect family

And by doing so you need these little clippers

So I’m going to clip around this tree right here and get rid of these unwanted tips

And give the Christmas tree its strong tip at the top

And something to keep in mind is these Christmas trees they grow year round, they grow 12 months of the year and during the months of July and August they grow the most

So these trees need to be sheared pretty much weekly because if they aren’t maintained and sheared they won’t grow evenly and then you’ve got a tree with some fuller spots on side than the other and tips that are growing skewed

So the trees really need daily maintenance to be taken care of

And that can turn a premium tree down to a number two if you don’t take care of it right

We’ll talk about grades of trees in a different video and what that means

So as you can see I’ve clipped up the top and now we have one branch at the top

Now once you get it down to a single branch you want to give it a fresh cut

Do it like so, right off the top

So now that I’ve gotten the top taken care of its time to work on the body of the tree

And just so I don’t miss any spaces I’m going to work around the tree and slice it from top to bottom as if it was shaped like a pyramid

So I want to come outwards and that gives a Christmas tree its full look

So I’m going to start from the top and go down

It is very important to stay careful and have a strong base on your feet because as you can see the ground I’m standing on isn’t level it is far from it

I actually almost fell off a cliff an hour ago this morning

But I’m going to go around the tree like so, keep it nice and uniform

Smaller trees can take less time, bigger trees can take more time

And when the trees get really tall and start to get 7 feet and up, when the tip gets too tall to branch, too tall to clip, we have clippers with an elongated shaft that basically you stand at the bottom and  shear from the top

But this one even though being 5 foot seven, I can reach the top of it no problem

So I’m going to make my way around the tree, evening it out

And that right there is looking pretty good

If you want to come over here and get a shot of the tree going around it looks pretty nice

Compared to how it did just a few minutes ago

You got one tip and the top and it’s got a nice full look

Come around November it’s time to harvest this baby and get it to the right family

My name is Jackson and I would like to thank you again for watching my video, stay tuned for more content coming soon and soon to be, happy holidays

Have a good one, thank you