Life’s roads take Proctor to West Virginia for his Christmas tree operation

Derick Proctor, 77, owner of Potts Creek Tree Farm in Waiteville, W.Va., opened his operation, and its stock of Canaan firs, to the public this year. The tree farm has been a lifelong dream for the former developer who purchased the 200-acre site for the farm after seeing it on various hunting trips. (Photo courtesy Derick Proctor)

WAITEVILLE, W.Va. — Derick Proctor’s long, entrepreneurial road into the Christmas tree industry started about 60 years ago when he enrolled at the University of Vermont to study agriculture.

It’s a road that took him to the U.S. Army, to a Vermont ski resort as an instructor, to the Southeast where he worked as a real estate developer, to law school in his mid-50s after an early but brief retirement, and to his own business as a prison contractor.

Eventually, he landed in Monroe County, W.Va., to create Potts Creek Tree Farm, a 200-acre operation more than a decade in the making. This, he said — more than 4,000 hand-planted fir trees and a Christmas store run by a local paralegal he knows — was always the vision.

“It’s a dream I’ve had since the 1960s,” said Proctor, 77. “But for 40 years, give or take, I was working.”

The farm has been operating for the last three seasons, selling exclusively to the wholesale market, he said. This season, however, is the farm’s debut to the public.

Proctor bought the land in 2009 after eyeing it over the course of several hunting trips to the area. His developing background helped him tailor the site to his needs, but he quickly realized his untested agricultural education — half a century old — was, by that point, obsolete. Soil testing was now required. Fertilizers and sprays were different. Methods of planting were as well. There were even new kinds of trees and fresh diseases to worry about. Even the appearance of trees that sold — slimmer, to fit in small homes and apartments — had also changed.

“I was as green as a Christmas tree,” he said. “I really didn’t know what to do.”

Proctor credits tree associations in West Virginia and Virginia with helping him bridge the educational gap. He decided to grow blue spruce trees, Fraser firs and, lastly, Canaan firs, because they hold their needles and smell good. They also do well in his farm’s clay soil. He hired a group of workers and began planting by hand, gridding the trees into straight lines that wow both customers and Proctor, who winces at the thought of cutting them down each year.

“I’m just fond of my trees,” he said.

After planting 4,000 trees in the spring, he manages about 20,000 of them. The goal, he said, is to sell about 2,000 a year to individual customers. He started small this year with 500 and has about 200 left.

The shift away from the wholesale marketing has been successful so far due to the efforts of Darla Miller, the paralegal, who has marketed the farm on social media and in the community, including a local Christmas parade float. Miller’s Christmas store sells, as Proctor said, “Christmas stuff” including antiques.

“We have been overwhelmed with people,” he said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, and it’s been phenomenally successful. … People say we have the most beautiful trees they’ve ever seen, and I’ve worked hard to make them that way.”

The farm opened on Nov. 25, and every tree costs $65, no matter the size. It’s close to popular tourist attractions such as Paint Bank and Hollow Hill Farm for buffalos.

“I think it’s going to be here for a long time and make a lot of families happy,” Proctor said. “And that makes me happy.”

One would think this might be his final venture, but Proctor describes himself as “kind of a workaholic.”

“I’m just thrilled to be up here in the mountains enjoying the farm, and it’s just a labor of love,” he said. “I’ve done the things I wanted to do. What more can a man ask for?”