Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
It is pruned to be sharp and crinkly.
This time of year, halls are decked with it around the world. But where does holly come from?
For a Colfax man, he knows just where it comes from and how it is grown.
Mike Reuter grew up on a holly farm on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.
On five acres of the island, Reuter’s parents grew holly and made wreaths every Christmas season. Reuter’s mother Helen turned 100 this October at the Courtyard in Colfax.
The Reuters grew what is called English blue stem holly, one of 150 varieties of the tree. This particular breed was developed in nearby Gig Harbor.
The trees grow tall but are kept pruned to remain 10-12 feet high. Berried holly grows on female trees so the Reuters had just six male trees and 400 female, as is a common ratio on holly farms.
Each year on Thanksgiving Day, high time began at the Reuters’ farm. It would continue through Christmas and into the growing and pruning season after the first of the year.
Only some watering was necessary for the trees. From January through April pruning took place, and the Reuters piled up the clippings in a 100-foot by 25-30 foot pile and burned it.
“You can’t do that anymore,” said Reuter.
When Mike married in 1978, he and his wife Mary moved into a house on his parents’ property. Mary would hang laundry on the line, about 700-800 feet from the burn piles, and the clothes would smell like smoke.
Aside from pruning and burning, the trees would need to be sprayed twice each year. This was done before bugs laid eggs, which could cause purple spots on the leaves.
In the summer, the work in the holly rows included fertilizing and keeping the grass down. The Reuters used two tons of fertilizer each year and would cut the grass low with old-fashioned scythes.
Mike never liked that part.
“It’s a knack to running a hand-scythe,” he said of his father’s skill. “It takes a real knack to do it.”
Fall was then the waiting period.
When November neared its end and time came for harvest, the Reuters would hire four to five people to go out and cut. Up on ladders, the workers would clip the 12-inch leaves short for wreath holly. The berries grow on holly in its second year. For wreath holly, seven inches were cut off, leaving three remaining.
After clipping, the holly was dropped into wire baskets and wood-and-wire crates, dipped in a hormone solution to preserve the leaves and keep cool outside.
If the temperature dipped near freezing, the crates and baskets would be moved inside.
The leaves did not need to be stored for long; since right when harvest began Helen started constructing wreaths on a wire frame.
Mike made up five and 10-pound shipping boxes at night, and the wreaths would be placed in them and brought to the nearby Burton post office to be sent all over the United States and Canada.
The postmaster left the heat off in the morning in order to keep the Reuters’ holly cool until it was shipped out.
In addition, the waxed cardboard boxes of wreaths could not be placed in the vicinity of citrus products, because the “gas” of the citrus can turn the holly black.
Each day during harvest, the clipping crew could not begin until 8 – 9 a.m. and would conclude in the late afternoon, when it became too hard to see the quality of what they were picking. The dark green leaves are what they sought, said Mike.
When he was a teenager, Mike came home from school, put on a rubber jacket and rubber gloves and joined the clippers for about two hours. He made up boxes after dinner. If there was an opportunity to get home early from school, he would.
All the while, Helen and other women kept making wreaths. Helen, who acted as supervisor, could make 35 per day while the highest output was 60 per day from another wreath-maker.
Each year, the Reuters sent out 150 wreaths per day for three weeks, plus boxed holly.
There were five holly farms on Vashon Island. All are gone or left overgrown now, essentially replaced by bigger operations in Oregon.
The Reuters’ farm was something done in addition to Bill Reuter’s other work as chief engineer for a 50,000-watt KIRO radio transmitter on the island.
“It was not a profit-making business,” said Mike. “More of providing a service and something my folks loved to do to make people happy.”
After Bill died, Helen closed the farm in 1993, after 52 years. The land was sold in 2002.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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