Meet the Christmas tree harvester

Have you ever looked at your Christmas tree and admired how well it looks after you spent hours decorating it?

Chances are you have, but have you looked at your tree and wondered how it actually gets harvested? I recently travelled to Co Wexford to see a specialised piece of machinery designed to do one job in particular – harvest Christmas trees.

The owner of this unique machine is Oliver Ryan from the village of Camolin. Oliver grew up on a tillage farm, from where he set up his own agri contracting business.

He offered his services cutting corn and silage to the local farming community up until 2000, when he decided to diversify into the ground care market.

Oliver now offers the services of aeration, grass reseeding and sand spreading, along with many others. He is still a keen tillage farmer and has an impressive collection of machines in his shed to carry out all his own work as well as that of his neighbours.

10,000 trees

So where do Christmas trees fit into this story?

Oliver has actually been involved in Christmas tress since 1995 when he used to help out harvesting them, which was all done manually at the time, as well as selling them.

As time went on, he gradually got more involved and started offering the services of spraying and fertilising the trees during the year.

In 2008, Oliver made the jump and planted 10,000 of his own trees on five acres of the farm. The trees grow in a 10-year cycle, with harvesting commencing in year seven when 10% of the crop is harvested.

Year eight will see 30% to 40% cut and year nine and 10 the remainder. This means that every year Oliver has had to plant another five acres, which he doubled this year to 10 acres, in order to ensure he has a steady supply of trees.

The most popular varieties he uses are noble and nordmann, due to their desirable characteristics.

Growing Christmas tress is not as easy as you might think, it is not a case of sowing them and closing the gate.

They require a lot of maintenance throughout the entire year, such as fertilising, spraying, pruning and shaping, which up until now has mostly been done manually. This summer Oliver took the jump and splashed out on a new purpose-built harvester which he says reduces manual labour by up to 30%.

Lets take a closer look

The harvester is manufactured in the Netherlands by the Damcon Company, that specialise in equipment for working with Christmas trees as well as in orchards and nurseries. The MultiTrike is a known as a high-clearance tractor, sporting a ground clearance of 210-245cm. They can be fitted with various different attachments in numerous places to carry out all the jobs associated with Christmas trees. These include pruners, shapers, fertiliser spreaders, sprayers, rotavators and harvesting equipment. They are all easily interchangeable via three-point linkage-style couplings, making it quick and simple to go from one job to the next.

The MultiTrike has three wheels, with the steering taken care of by the front one. The track width of 60cm can be adjusted hydraulically to suit different width rows and applications, and can also be levelled independent of each other by up to 34cm for operating on slopes.

Power is supplied courtesy of a Kubota V2003M four-cylinder diesel engine that produces 55hp. Transferring this power into movement is the job of a hydrostatic transmission that delivers power to each of the three wheels. The operator sits in relative comfort inside a narrow cab, which Oliver tells me had to be widened at the factory to suit the typical Irish gentleman. The inside of the cab is basic, but does feature a heater and air conditioning as standard – a welcome upgrade.

This machine was not a cheap investment at €160,000 plus VAT, which was helped somewhat by going into a partnership with another local grower – making it less of a daunting investment for both parties. For that money you not only get the machine itself, but also numerous attachments, including three sprayers, a pruner, two fertiliser boxes, a tree shaper and the harvesting head.

The cutting blade is fitted with carbide tips and is powered by a 30hp hydraulic motor, allowing it to harvest up to 10,000 trees daily.

Coming from an agricultural contracting background, Oliver is no stranger to modifying existing and engineering new machines to suit his needs. After starting to harvest his trees this year one thing immediately became apparent, he wanted more output. The standard harvesting system can only move to one side and uses a small low-powered cutting blade. Oliver came up with the concept of using a larger, more powerful blade that could cut both to the left and right. He employed the expertise of local engineer Nicolas Gainford to help make his idea a reality and before long, the MultiTrike was sporting a new heavy-duty harvesting system.

The new system features a larger-diameter cutting disc fitted with carbide steel tips. Power to the blade is supplied by a 30hp hydraulic motor, allowing up to 10,000 trees to be harvested in a single day.

The next problem Oliver faced was that because the MultiTrike is only fitted with a 55hp engine it would take too much power from other functions by using it to power the blade as well. The solution was to fit another four-cylinder 50hp Perkins engine onto the three-point linkage behind the cab – which Oliver says can be fitted in only 20 minutes as all the connections are plug and play. This engine’s only job is to power the harvesting system and it is fully controllable via its own control panel located inside the cab.

Every year Oliver harvests his own and local growers’ trees, as well as being sub contracted into the Emerald group. Of all the Christmas trees harvested this year, 90% of them will make their way across the water to the UK as they cannot produce enough for their own domestic market.

So when you’re sitting back enjoying your Christmas dinner, you can now appreciate where your tree comes from and the machine that may have actually harvested it.

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