The president of Treetop Acres, John Fuerch, says they have been growing Christmas trees as a part-time business for almost 40 years.

"I can say that it just seems like yesterday that we started. This is a fabulous job. I couldn't ask for better," said Fuerch. 

Though the first attempt at planting trees didn't work, Fuerch says he and his wife didn't give up.

"We ended up getting 1,000 tree stock... We lost all of them in the first year, not knowing what we were doing. Then we started taking transplant stock and moving it into transplant beds and then we ended up getting success from that. Twenty years down the road, we ended up buying the property that was behind us... We put 6,000 trees on the field," said Fuerch.

A lot of knowledge and work goes into sustaining a Christmas tree farm. First, it's critical to understand which types of trees are conducive to which places. The works to maintain such a business is year-round. Treetop plants about 2,000 seedlings every spring. Through the summer, a lot of care is needed, which includes trimming and weed control. From the seedlings, it takes approximately seven to nine years to grow a tree.

"A lot of people think it will grow in one year. That is not true. We try to get stock that is very good for Christmas trees, so when we buy stock, we buy it as a Christmas tree stock from Pennsylvania. And by doing that, they're already an established seeds source that actually gives us a very nice tree," said Fuerch.

Though the work takes years, Treetop says the most sales occur in just a few weekends leading up to Christmas. They sell close to a thousand trees a year. If you're interested in growing Christmas trees, you can gain knowledge from the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York.