FRENCHVILLE, Maine — Vernon Labbe is somewhat of a matchmaker.
But instead of playing cupid between potential couples, in the weeks leading up to Christmas he matches families to the perfect Christmas tree at his Frenchville tree farm.
“I don’t know how he does it,” Sharon Chasse of Fort Kent said as she and her husband Carl walked the rows of trees on Labbe’s 6-acre farm Sunday afternoon. “We tell Vern what we want and he will say, ‘Look down that row five trees in and three trees to your right.’ He knows every tree here.”
The Chasses have been coming to the Labbe farm for 27 years in search of the perfect tree and were bundled up Sunday and ready for the hunt in the 20-degree temperatures and passing snow squalls.
“We always do it [Thanksgiving] weekend and come out on a Sunday,” Sharon Chasse said. “I have old English type of ornaments that are very heavy and the branches on the trees can really hold them.”
For the Chasses, it’s all about tradition.
“It’s about getting the tree and nurturing it and giving it water,” Sharon Chasse said. “We’ve even had a few trees that have grown in the house — they started to get this new growth on them — and it just feels more Christmasy.”
Labbe primarily grows the aromatic balsam firs but also has a small stand of the sturdier Fraser firs.
A full-time forester with the Maine Bureau of Public Lands, Labbe has operated the farm with his wife Joyce since 1983.
Labbe figures he sells around 350 trees each year but is thinking he may hit 400 this year.
“It’s been great,” he said Sunday afternoon in between wrangling and loading trees. “The weather is really cooperating and the people are coming early this year.”
Some, he said, came as early as August to pre-select and tag their Christmas trees.
“They wait until the blackflies are gone,” he said with a laugh. “They can come and pick up a tag, put their names on it and tag the tree they want.”
Labbe said his buyers are very loyal, with 90 percent of his business coming from repeat customers from around Maine and as far away as Connecticut.
“Now we are getting into generations with the second generation coming and they have young kids, [and] I love that,” he said, holding his hand out waist high. “I can remember when they came and they were this tall and now they have kids that are this tall.”
Many of his customers are discerning and savvy tree shoppers.
“I have learned over the years to be cautious,” Sharon Chasse said. “You have to look the tree over because they always look smaller in the field than they do in your living room.”
This year the couple was on the hunt for a tree that was narrow, but well filled out.
“There’s a narrow one right there, Sharon,” Carl Chasse said, pointing to a tree as his wife walked in between the rows looking in the opposite direction.
“That’s a nice tree right there, but it would be too fat. Which one do you see?” she said.
“Right in front of you,” Carl Chasse said.
“It has to be perfect all the way around,” she said, walking around the tree her husband had pointed out. “I don’t know, this one just doesn’t do it for me.”
Off to the side, Carl Chasse shook his head and laughed.
“So picky,” he said. “So picky.”
A few rows, over Paul and Lisa Bernier of Frenchville were on the hunt for their own perfect Christmas tree.
“We are looking for an 8-footer that is full; full [because] we like them big,” Lisa Bernier said. “We always come to Vern because he knows exactly what we want, and we are always happy with it.”
Well, maybe not always.
“I came on my own one year,” Paul Bernier said. “I chose a tree, brought it home, came back with it and told Vern, ‘She didn’t want it’ [and] I came back three times before I got the right tree.”
Bernier said that was his last solo tree hunt.
“No, no, it’s him,” Lisa Bernier said pointing to her husband. “He’s worse than I am and he was the one that did not like the trees and now we ask Vern if he has one for us.”
Labbe cheerfully accepts returns.
“Paul wasn’t the first to return a tree for a different one and he won’t be the last,” Labbe said. “I’ve had people come back, oh yeah.”
After cutting down the Bernier’s 2015 Christmas tree this Sunday, Labbe carefully measured it before helping Paul Bernier load it into his pickup truck.
“That’s pretty close to 8-feet,” Labbe said. “It may be a bit taller and get some green on your ceiling.”
All day Sunday it was a steady stream of families — some with small children, some with dogs — driving into Labbe’s lot in search of the perfect tree. Some brought tape measures to ensure the perfect tree height.
Brian Dionne and Amy Shaw of St. David pulled in with their sons Grayson, 4, and Brayden, 2.
“We come every year and as the family grows, it just gets better,” Dionne said, looking at his boys dashing around the trees. “Grayson, did you find one for memere?”
For Shaw, the annual trip to Labbe’s is the start of the Christmas season, and she takes the tree selection very seriously.
“It has to be the perfect tree for ‘mommy,’” she joked.
“Mommy and the boys pick it out,” Dionne said. “I’m just here to measure and mark the tree.”
Meanwhile, the Chasses found themselves back at Labbe’s garage preparing to purchase a pre-cut tree on display.
“We walked every acre on this farm and ended right back where we started,” Carl Chasse joked.
“You’re the third person today that’s done that,” Labbe said. “But you got some exercise, some fresh air and worked off the [Thanksgiving] turkey.”
As pickups arrived empty and left loaded down with fresh trees, Labbe could not help but smile.
“We live in balsam country and this is balsam country, OK?,” he said. “No one can grow balsam like we can here, [and] you can’t beat a balsam.”
