By Chris Aldridge

Kentucky Ag News

LEXINGTON — If you’re looking for live Christmas trees, you can find them at Nieman Tree Farm in Fayette County. But if you’re looking for hot chocolate or a wagon ride you won’t find it there.  

“We only do trees,” owner Tom Nieman said, “and we do them very well.”

The tree farm has plenty of sizes to pick from but only one variety

“All we do is Fraser firs,” he said proudly. “They’re the best.”

When Nieman moved from upstate New York to eastern Fayette County in 1977, he was told Fraser firs would not grow in Kentucky.

“I said, ‘That's baloney! I can grow them,’” Nieman explained. “So, we tried, and we lost, and we tried, and we lost.

“We used to put in 1,000 trees and lose 900. So far (this year), we’ve only lost 11 out of 500…. We know what we're doing now.”

Nieman has approximately 20,000 Fraser firs of all sizes growing on a 48-acre former tobacco farm. In the early 2000s, he opted for the Tobacco Buyout and transitioned to Christmas trees.

“We did just what the government wanted us to do – grow alternative crops,” Nieman said. “We took the money and bought trees.

“If it wouldn’t have been for that, we probably wouldn't have made it,” he added. “The money coming in from the buyout was huge.”

Nieman is a third-generation nursery owner whose grandmother immigrated to America from Germany in 1880. The young girl arrived at the family’s new home in Cincinnati with two small suitcases – one containing her clothing and a doll, and the other containing seeds and plants that would become the genesis of the family’s first nursery.

While the rest of his family was involved in the family business, Nieman left for college, eventually earning a doctorate in environmental psychology and started teaching at Syracuse University. He returned closer to home nearly a half-century ago to help start a new landscape architecture program at the University of Kentucky (UK).

“My wife and I agreed to give it five years,” Nieman said. “That was 1977. I taught 39 years at UK.”

Over nearly four decades, Nieman left his mark on three huge agriculture-related research campuses at UK. He laid out the 735-acre Coldstream Research Campus on the north side of Lexington, the 1,484-acre C. Oran Little Research Center near Versailles, and the nearly 1,600-acre UK Research and Education Center near Princeton.

Although it wasn’t his intention, Nieman’s Christmas trees are almost 100 percent organic.

“We haven't sprayed insecticide in over five years,” he said. “This is probably heresy for the horticulture people, but we think the tree is taking care of itself.”

Fraser firs normally grow about a foot every year, but Nieman’s have exceeded that.

“In the last five years, we're getting about 15 inches a year rather than 12,” he said. “In a four-year time period, that gives us an extra foot.”

Nieman sells between 800 and 1,000 trees every year. He boasted that he could have sold 2,000 last year but declined because that would’ve cut into this year’s supply. Nieman said demand for real trees remains strong because a dwindling number of Kentucky tree farms has decreased the supply.

“Right now, in Kentucky, there's maybe 25 or so (tree farms),” he said. “When I got here in the 1970s, there was probably closer to 40 or so.

Nieman named two nearby Christmas tree farms that have gone out of business recently. “People get older, and they drop out,” he noted, “and the newer ones don't have the property or the knowledge.”

Nieman said being a member of Kentucky Proud has helped his business.

“I think Kentucky Proud is super,” he said. “It's benefited me because I feel that this state, and especially that group of people, personally care. I can call them, I can talk to them, and they care about whether this place survives or not.”