About Us

Treefarm For Sale

Introduction

Who You Are

Growth Trends

Why It Works

Future Directions

Low Hanging Fruit

Seasonal Cycle

Due Diligence

How It Works

Next Step

What You Get

Notes

How it works

Operational Overview

This is a container based tree farm: Everything is done in pots. Tree size ranges from seedling to 2 inch caliper. The farm has been growing steadily for the last 9 years, even while the economy has tanked. Remember the crunch in 2008? We grew. The crunch when oil dropped to 40 bucks a barrel? We grew, just not much. It is ready for the next step up. We've had a cash flow of just under 80 thousand dollars the last two years. In 2017, we hit 80,000 on the first of June.

We buy seedlings that are surplus from reforestation and reclamation projects. Some we sell. We plant the rest in pots, and water them for a year or two.

Some we sell. The reminder move to a larger pot. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Overall it’s not worth growing ourselves unless we do about 300 a year. So for fruit trees and selected ornamentals we buy them from wholesale nurseries, and resell them. Left over stock moves up a pot size.

Clientele

Our market is largely farm and acreage owners, with some city customers, and a few out of province clients. We have specialized in smaller trees. Seedlings have grown in popularity, possibly due to the economy, but I think mostly because more people are attempting bigger projects.

Current market niches

• Seedlings. Last year we bought 14,000 seedlings, and sold half of them within weeks. The remainder we planted into larger containers. We are sending trees all over Alberta, and a few deliveries each year into Saskatchewan and B.C. This year we have ordered 19,000. In this niche our chief competitor is Tree Time, and The Saskatoon Farm. Currently 15-20% of our annual sales.
• Shelterbelt Trees. The typical customer has an acreage or farm and wants to put at least one row of trees between themselves and the wind. Most of this size is sold as one or two gallon pots. This is our main bread and butter niche. We grow about 2/3 of these from scratch.
• Privacy screening. A good deal of overlap with the shelterbelt market, but with more emphasis on smaller, narrower trees. This niche has been growing steadily. The largest demand here is for trees already taller than the fence.
• Edible landscaping. Currently about 15% of our total sales. We do not know of any nursery that carries a larger selection of fruit trees and fruit shrubs. We work with the local permaculture people in this, and often are their supplier of choice.
• Reclamation and naturalization. Mostly native trees and shrubs, often at small sizes. Sold mostly to contractors reclaiming drilling sites, and municipalities making low maintenance corridors. This area at present is wildly variable, as individual contracts tend to be infrequent, but large.

Marketing

This is one area where we are weak. At present we are running about 30 ads on kijiji. We have a commercial account that costs us a penny a click. Not clear if this is effective. Kijiji is getting more display ad oriented, and is becoming less effective.

(Previous to doing it this way, I wrote individual ads and kept renewing them. Kijiji only allows 8 free ads in a category now, and doesn't allow province wide ads, so it would mean managing 8 ads per group x 7 markets per ad x 2 provinces. Or maintaining multiple identities on kijiji which is against their rules, and an even larger hassel. Life is too short)

Facebook. I participate in a bunch of garden/fruit groups, and a large bunch of buy and sell groups. This is not yet optimum. Need a better way to stay on top of things.

Newsletter. I've recently restarted my newsletter after a 2 year hiatus. I'm working on getting a signup on facebook for the newsletter. Currently at 1500 addresses. Trying to do monthly.

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Want to talk right now? Talk to me: (8 am to 8 pm only, please) 1-780-848-2548