While Christmas is a time of relaxing and celebrating, for Clifford Pippen, 91, as a teen and an adult, there was some hard work in the months preceding the event, and this was cutting down Christmas trees.
In fact, in his career, he estimated that 40,000 trees he cut ended up in living rooms in Canada and US, from his handy work.
Pippen, a resident of Sunshine Lodge, grew up about 15 miles outside of Cranbrook in a community called Mayook. He was the middle child with two older sisters and one younger. They would celebrate CHristmas with his extended family. He particularly remembers when his younger sister would come home from the Airforce and they would celebrate.
“I guess we were poor, but we never noticed it. We made do with what we had and never complained about it,” he tells the Mail.
He said in his community they would host a Christmas Concert, and take a collection. The funds from the concert would be doled out to families to buy gifts. Gifts would always be necessities. He was the first student from his community to go to high school and he would board in Cranbrook.
It was after the war and when he and his father began cutting Christmas trees.
He explains that to get a permit for a cutting block of trees you had to prove you put in time maintaining the forest.
“We had a pretty big permit at the time. It was 1,000 to 2,500 trees and you would work on that. We had to put in 10 man-days working on improvements,” explains Pippen.
When he was at high school in Cranbrook, he would come home on the weekends and holidays to work on the trees.
He explains they would trim the trees, and they would have to wait until the frost set in before cutting to set the needles. This would start in November and had only about three weeks to a month to fulfill their quota. They had to pay stumpage and would cut the trees, bundle them for shipping and sell to a buyer who would often ship them south across the border to the US.
“We made a living at it. We didn’t make much, but like a lot of things around then, it is a lot different today. We lived off what we made. Now a lot of people live beyond their means. They don’t know how to make do with what they got,” he said. ”At the time, I could make about $1,000 off the permit, and that was enough to keep the farm going.”
Eventually, his father retired, and Pippen took over the family farm. He continued to fill his quota of trees. This continued until the 1970s when he sold. Today he says most of the trees today are farmed trees, and natural stand trees are less common.
As for what kind of tree they would harvest? Douglas Fir ruled the day.
“The spruce trees aren’t very good, they don’t hold the needles. The Jack Pine…only the poor people had them,” he chuckles. “Fir was the classic. You don’t have a Christmas tree unless you have a Douglas Fir.”
“When you cut the trees, you always brought home a good one for the house.”
