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When I was about oh, I don't know 14 or 15 dad taught me to use a shearing knife and It's just basically it's a big long lightweight knife and you swing it down the side of the tree to shear them So I've basically been knife shearing for over 50 years and I still do it and I would dare say there's probably nobody else in the world that For whatever that's worth knife shearing Christmas trees. I've probably been doing it longer that knife must be brutal sharp I sharpen it every day I've seen some really bad cuts from those knives. I mean, if you cut yourself, it's usually gonna require, it's always gonna require stitches and a lot of times tendon repair. You know, so yeah, you gotta, and I've never fortunately- Nothing says Merry Christmas like tendon repair. Welcome to Aggressive Life. We're less than a week away from Christmas 2023. And I'll tell you one thing, the hardest working guy in this season isn't wearing fuzzy red jumpsuit. It's not even the guy who is doing last minute Christmas shopping. It's not even the woman who's just doing all of her baking. The hardest working guy is probably my guest today. Corsi Tree Farm is Cincinnati's largest and long and running Christmas tree farm, spanning over 100 acres of you cut evergreens and a variety of types and sizes. It started over 50 years ago, and as a business venture between Lou Corsi and his father-in-law, they had 20 acres of Scotch pines. They were growing wholesale, but friends and family kept showing up to cut their own, adding acreage and a variety of. Evergreen Trees, Corsi Tree Farms is now in the hands of Lou's son, Sheldon. Though I'm just meeting Sheldon, I just met your hand today, shook your hand for the first time. I know a few things are true. Just like any other farmer, he works exceptionally hard. He puts other people above himself and he has a connection to the land that most of us don't understand in our day-to-day nine to five cubicle driven jobs. Well, while We might show up and cut a tree to take home. He spent untold hours caring for the trees that become the center of our holiday celebrations. I can't wait to find out about this because I'm currently frustrated with my tree. Today we're gonna solve all my tree problems, all your tree problems, all of your Christmas problems. Actually, all your Christmas problems are gonna be solved by my guest today, the power of hard work. Welcome to the aggressive life, Sheldon Corsi. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot. But you put a lot of pressure on me to solve all the problems. Well, you're going to help solve some problems. So here's my dilemma. Here's the deal. Let's go through my problem. My wife, she has issues. She has issues and all of her issues she expects to solve at Christmas. Like Christmas is going to be the perfect holiday that makes me feel good. And everything is great. And she, I'm just poking a little bit fun at her, but you know, we go around and around. I finally have allowed her to set up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. And actually, I shouldn't even say I finally allowed her. She just started doing it. Even though I tried to keep her from doing it, she's now doing it. Which I'm like, let's not blend the holidays. Let's have Halloween, and then let's have Thanksgiving, and then let's have Christmas. But she's blending them. And the main thing is, it's basically her hobby. She loves Christmas more than anything. It's wonderful. So here's the stress point. The stress point is she can't figure out what she wants with the tree. We had a really nice fake tree. It was expensive, pre-lit. We bought it several years ago, on sale at the end of the season. And I thought it was great, wonderful. And then it didn't work for her, so it was gone. It was like three years and it was gone. And now we're back to like fresh cut trees. And now the problem is the freaking things They just don't live long enough. I go the day after Thanksgiving to a local tree farm. They're nice. They're beautiful. It stopped sucking water a week in. What's going on? Yeah. Well, you know, my dad was a, he was a big wholesaler and, uh, in order to have trees on the lots by Thanksgiving, which is necessary. You know, if you're cutting tens of thousands of trees, you have to start, uh, well before Thanksgiving. You might be start cutting six weeks, eight weeks before Thanksgiving so that you can get them out of the field, bailed, stacked and loaded on trucks and delivered. And so that's a lot to require of a perishable. It's a perishable. It's got X amount of days, it's going to last. Another problem is that when they haul Christmas trees, they haul them on open trucks with racks. The trees that are down inside, it's great, but the ones that are along the sides and on top and they're hauling them three or four hundred miles maybe or even a hundred miles, it really dehydrates the ones that are exposed to the wind. So it's kind of a gamble, you know, you can go to a lot and you pick them up and one's as light as a feather and one feels like it's got a lot of water in it and that's probably why. It's partially because it's been cut a long time, but a lot of it is that trip. So if I solve this problem, because I really like where I'm going, I like the quality of trees. I don't like the prices, by the way, but I like where I'm going, it's close to my house. One of the ways I could solve it is to just pick up the trees and the heavy ones are probably still got water in them and will suck water. Yeah, especially if you're buying pre-cut trees. Yes. And you know, that is... One of the attractions of a cut-your-own farm is there's no question it's fresh. But on a lot, yeah, you want to feel the weight of them. You want to just kind of feel the overall. If they feel lush, they're probably going to hold up longer. And another really, probably, it's something that I really stress to people that most people don't do, is to run a humidifier in your house, whether you have one or don't. But because in the wintertime, your air gets so dry. If you can raise the humidity 10, 15, 20% in your house, it makes a world of difference on how long that tree lasts too. Fascinating. Okay, so there's more than just cutting the bottom two inches off, which I do, cut it, make it fresh. That's a good start, yeah, is cut the bottom, give it a fresh cut and feel the weight of it. You know, you have to be, like I said, you. All the trees may have come on the same truck, but there might be a really big difference between the freshness of them and how much they've been dried out on the trip. All right, so before we get to cut your own, because I want to get into that too, but if I'm going to keep going to the local place, things I can do is humidifier inside the house, feel them, if there's two similar size trees, the heavier ones, more hydrated, that's probably a good one. cut the bottom off, is it two inches, three inches, one inch, is that enough? Oh really, just a half an inch is enough. Oh that's enough. Yeah, all you're just trying to do is reopen the pores on the bottom that actually draw the moisture in. Okay. Because they seal over with sap after they're cut, so. Is there any other hidden hacks that I might not be doing? Well, another big factor is the variety of tree. Pines, which are scotch pine mostly, and white pine, they hold their needles. exceptionally well. Then the fir trees do real well. They're kind of like almost as good. Spruce trees, and I sell a lot of spruce, they don't hold their needles real well. They'll last with, particularly with, if you keep the humidity up, they'll last probably four or five weeks in the house, at least three weeks. So, but everybody cuts early this year. They cut Thanksgiving weekends, one of my big ones. And, you know, you're, you're asking a tree to last five or six weeks just to get to Christmas, you know. five weeks probably anyway. And that's most of them will, but once in a while you'll, you'll get one that doesn't. Okay. So here's, here's why I don't cut my own tree anymore. Cause we used to do that when we did, when we find some place to do it. They're just not as good. They're not as symmetrical. They're, they're, you get these ones off a lot, man. Every one is like, damn that is a, that is a beautiful tree. And I assume the reasons because The ones that are sold in the lot, at least the lot that I'm going to, they're probably expensive because they've got people all year long who are trimming them up to make sure they're symmetrical. Is that what you guys do? Yeah, I do. You do. Every tree. You do, like you are the guy. Personally, yeah. Yeah, I've been shearing trees since I learned when I was like five or six years old. When I was about, oh, I don't know, 14 or 15, dad taught me to use a shearing knife. And it's just... Basically, it's a big, long, lightweight knife, and you swing it down the side of the tree to shear them. And I've taught a lot of boys how to do it. But back then, I had a lot of trees. I couldn't shear them all myself. Now I've scaled back to where I do all my own trimming. You know, no two guys shear them the same. And so there is variation in the way they were sheared. Now, and anybody that's been there can tell you that the trees are all very, very similar. They're either all right or they're all wrong because I'm doing them all. So, and I've been knife shearing. I still knife shear. I'll be 68 here in a couple weeks. And you are not 68. Get out of here. Are you serious? But so I've basically been knife shearing for over 50 years and I still do it. And I would dare say there's probably nobody else in the world that for whatever that's worth, knife shearing Christmas trees, I've probably been doing it longer than anybody that's still currently doing it. You know, it's a little rough on you. It's a tough, it's a tough job. All right. But that does make the trees very symmetrical. So let's geek out on this. I want you to give away your hidden secrets, not because any of us are ever going to do this, but I just find guys who work with their hands fascinating. I find old school techniques just not used. I think there's a reason why men are four times more prone to depression than are women. And I don't think it's just that. we're more lonely. I do think there's this connection that men have historically had throughout all anthropological history with the work of our hands. And we get done with the end of a day and we turn around and we look what we did. And I think for the average guy, they feel satisfied. I did that. Most of us, like myself, don't have that. I turn around the end of the day and I look at my computer and said, well, I had some zoom calls today. I turn around the end day, look at my calendar. And well, I had a full calendar today. But, you know, I think you know, folks like you, I always want to dig into your story because I'm so fascinated by it because you're, you're doing stuff. Well, that's, you know, that, that method of sharing is, is old school. Um, I've tried different, different methods, but there is nothing that does it as well as a knife with a guy that knows how to use it. When I look at the phone, you say knife, you're talking about like a, like a, uh, machete. Yeah, but it's a real lightweight blade. I mean, it's, it's about. maybe an inch and a half or inch and a quarter wide all the way down, but it's super lightweight because the idea is to get a lot of speed on it and to get speed on it you got to take it you got to snap your wrist as you're coming down and if you're doing if you're using a heavy knife It just wears your arm out, you know but I've tried I bought a machine one year called a sage trimmer and it had a eight-foot sickle bar that came that was supported by a backpack and a gasoline mower motor and you walk around the tree with that. And it was just, it was a weirdest invention, but I spent a lot of money for it, so I used it a few years to justify the purchase. But if I had ever fallen with that on my back, it would be like falling into a shark pit. I mean, it had eight foot blade with sickle bar blade, you know, cutters. So, and it didn't do the job that a knife, you know, a knife is just the way to go. Now I look at the farm and, you know, It's so much different than what, and you brought up the point that you actually, you get a lot of personal satisfaction, a lot of gratification from, from doing this job and you can, I look at the farm and I look at all the trees and I'm like, wow, I either have shared all those or I, I have to do them. And, uh, people are just kind of blown away by that, but it's like eating an elephant, you know, how you eat an elephant. one bite at a time. So I go out, I'm a real, I set goals. I set daily goals, you know. So I go, okay, you know, this is all overwhelming, but all I have to do is just a few rows in this patch today. That's my goal. So, you know, I do that. And then if I still feel good, I might do a couple more rows. If not, then I go do something else and I've reached that goal for the day. So how long is a row? Oh, it would depends on the field. But let's just say, let's say I'm going to knife shear three hours or four hours maybe. And I take plenty of breaks. I don't work like I used to. So but basically you just take a chunk and you say, OK, I'm going to do this today. So when you bring that knife down to cut it, you're not cutting a branch by the trunk. It's hitting the outer edges of the, of the brand. Oh yeah, no, you're cutting the new growth. Like the trees, they do all they're growing in, uh, say May from, from early May through about mid June. They're putting out their new growth and when they put out their new growth, it's really soft and it's easy to cut. And, um, and then as the year goes on, it gets a little tougher, but you're still only cutting the new growth. So it's, no, you're not, you know, hopefully you can take a swing and. take a full cut from top to bottom. That knife must be brutal sharp. I sharpen it every day. I sharpen it with a stone. I don't shear with short pants. I wear gloves on my hands because I've seen some really bad cuts from those knives. I mean, if you cut yourself, it's usually going to require, it's always going to require stitches and a lot of times tendon repair. You know, so, so yeah, you got it. And I've never, fortunately, nothing says Merry Christmas like tendon repair. So it's a certain amount of risk to it, but, uh, but I've been doing it 50 some years and I've never cut myself anything significantly, you know, so. Well, if you're taking one hand to come down with speed, how are you getting the other hand in there to even get cut? How does that, how, how do you get hurt? Well, The worst cut that I've ever seen, my brother cut his hand and he hit himself across these two knuckles and cut about halfway through them when he was like 15. But what he did, he was young, he was 15, he was young, he was little, and he was one of those guys that did everything full bore. So as he's cutting with the knife and we didn't wear a glove on our left hand at that time, and he used his other hand to kind of... balance out and he came down and hit his fingers. So we, yeah, it was, yeah, I remember that day. It was pretty ugly. Oh gosh. So let's say, uh, first of all, it just says I'm going to put dibs in for your farm next year, because I don't know what your sales goals are, but we're going to freaking crush those next year. And you need to make sure that you save a good nine foot tree for you. Cause I am coming out. I am coming out. That's gonna make, so your average. If I do a nine foot tree, how many times in the course of that tree's life do you have your knife on it? Oh, I would say probably seven or eight times. I've sheared it. I usually when I shear, I mean, they'll grow, they might grow a foot and a half, but I usually take off all but about 14 or 15 inches on the top because that's what keeps them compact and dense. You want to keep that top growth under control and you don't really share them the first year usually. So, um, so probably, yeah, probably seven or eight times. All right. That makes sense. But yeah, the, well, when I've gone to cut my own tree, which we've done for a while, it's just, they're crappy trees. And so it's just because it doesn't have an owner. that's actually grooming them like you are, is that right? Probably, and you know, I'm kind of a dying greed. I mean, you know, I've outlasted a lot of my competition. I've seen businesses close, I've seen them change hands, and sometimes if it changes hands. the guy that comes in and takes it over really doesn't know what he's doing. And I didn't either when I first started. You know, I learned stuff every year. And sometimes it's just you've had bad weather, diseases, this or that. So sometimes it's stuff that's beyond your control. I mean, if we have a drought, like we did in, I think it was 02, was the last bad one that I had. I wiped out everything I planted that year. I planted... I think I planted probably 15 or 20,000 trees that year. And so the next year I doubled up. I planted twice as many. And fortunately, I didn't have two bad survivals back to back. But somewhere down the road, even though the crops overlap, you're going to have a little bit of a little bit of a a slow spot in your supply, a little low spot, you know. So that can be it too, but you know, so. 15 to 20,000 trees you then double up. So you've got 30,000 trees that get planted and that's 30,000 trees that have to get groomed. Is that the right word, groomed? Yeah, eventually, yeah, pruned, sheared. Gosh. Yeah, but I mean, if you planted 15,000 this year and 15 the next year, it's still 30,000. But now I don't. So it's now that I'm kind of a pretty much a one man show. I just plant about 5000 trees a year. I've cut way back. And, you know, I, I started doing stuff to try and make the business fit myself in my age, because, you know, it gets harder every year as I get older. So there's no way back then it was easy to find help. I had half a dozen boys sharing for me all summer, stuff like that. And that's. It's hard to do that nowadays, you know, finding that much help. So is it because younger kids don't want to do that kind of work or what? Oh, I don't want to. I don't want to paint young people with such a broad brush. But maybe there's just a lot more easier. Maybe there's easier options now. Of course. And you can't blame them for that. But when you take when you hire an 18 or 19 year old person to come out, you know, if I could still hire guys for. start them at seven or eight dollars an hour, it'd be a different story. But now, everybody kind of feels like they should be starting at $15 an hour. And it's just, it takes me several weeks to teach a guy to share, obviously. So, it's really hard to do. And that's why you see a lot of guys are getting out of doing hay, and fortunately, tobacco's a thing of the past. Fortunately, that's not fortunately. Well, I mean- Talk to a tobacco user here. No, man, we need people Well, it's a cancer crop. When I say fortunately, I mean, they really relied on a lot of that cheap farm labor and it's just not there anymore. So yeah, when I say fortunately, I mean, tobacco farmers would be in the same position as me if they were still raising it. You know, it's, um, I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I went down to the Mexican border just to see what's going on with the whole immigration stuff there and it was, uh, it was crazy. It was. Heartbreaking, and there's no easy answers to it at all. But I went down. But basically, bottom line for me is we need stronger border security, and we need to let more people into the country legally. And one of the reasons I say that is I don't talk to a business owner who's like yourself, who doesn't say the same thing. You just can't find. Yeah, it's a real problem. And it's not really you can't find people who want to work. because if the unemployment is at 4%, people are working, they just would prefer not to do those kind of jobs. But those are the folks who are hiking up from Venezuela and Guatemala who are up for it. It doesn't matter where I turn, a rancher that I hunted elk on his property out in Idaho, if it's you, if it's somebody who does pools, drywallers, everybody is in that same position. Yeah, I mean, if they were a legal immigrant and they came to me, you know, and wanted work, you know, I would use them. But actually since now that I've kind of tailored the... the farm or to something that I can do myself, I'm no longer in that position where I rely on that. I wanna talk about that. In fact, I wanna get to that. But let me get back to trees. When you're planting these 15,000, 20,000, 30,000 trees, or when you were, and you're planting, how many right now did you say? 5,000. Are you planting a literal seed or is there a little sapling nearby? No, I buy... I buy trees ideally like in the 15 to 18 inch above ground. And then they've also got a nice big root system. And we plant them with a tree planter that you pull behind the tractor, two people ride it. I drive the tractor, I got a couple of people riding it, and they put the tree in the ground, and then the ground, it squeezes the ground shut on the tree. So, you know, depending on conditions, nice long rows, we might be able to average four or 500 trees an hour. So it really couple of days, usually we can get them all planted, you know. So if I come to you and buy a tree, how much am I going to pay for the tree? Well, a nine foot nice tree. This year we had a flat price of $85, which includes the tax, which, so the tree is actually probably $85. Yeah. That's ridiculously low. $85. I'd say right now the entire Tome family. We're all kicking ourselves. What the hell are we doing? That's I take my three kids, all my grandkids, my Lib and I, we go to the same place and we go, oh my gosh, the price of $85, brother, time for you to raise prices. My word. Yeah, the thing is that what I- For a groomed tree? Oh yeah. Live? No, what I do is I go out, I, you know, I can kind of estimate what I, whether I have plenty of trees for a season or I don't. And if I have plenty, then I don't juggle. I don't change my price much. If I feel like that I have, maybe I'm going to be really have trouble having the number of trees that I need, then I might use that. I'll go ahead and maybe raise my price a few bucks. Because that always that'll scare off a few customers. So it's always kind of a bound. But yeah, I had $85 like our season is pretty much over. We got a little bit of sales left. But. there's still a lot of nice trees out there, which means that. There is. Yeah, so even though the price was really good. She minds about dead. I might need to strip everything off my tree and get out there and get another tree. Wow. Now, I mean, but of course, at this point in the season, seven feet, seven and a half feet's about as big as you're gonna find that's nice, you know. Beginning of this, everybody buys bigger stuff. or a lot of people do. So the eight and nine foot and 10 foot trees go pretty quickly. They do. How much you buy the little sapling thing for? They run with shipping and everything. They're in the $4 to $5 range, which, you know, that's for, now I could buy cheaper plants. I could buy stuff for a dollar a piece, but I like starting with a good plant. But you know, you take 5,000 trees times four bucks a piece. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. If you're selling for 85, every tree has $80 as a, that's not much going into that tree. All your labor, all the water, the fertilizer, if you're doing fertilizer, the taxes you're paying on the ground and $80 that they can grow over, how long, how long is it to get a nine foot tree? Oh, seven or eight, nine years, you know, pretty much. Cause they don't grow much the first year. So, you know, but. I know there's people would come out and pay twice that. So sometimes I say, well, should I be raising half as many trees and selling them for twice as much, be making the same money and not working as hard? But then I like to be affordable because I've got people that, you know, they may be retired or they're not making, you know, a lot of money and they can still afford me and they've been coming there for 30 years. So I hate to price anybody out of it. You know, and people are coming and is it the old thing where they're getting on a tractor hay wagon, you pull them out and they get out and they pick their tree and chop it up, chop it down or saw it down? Is that the well, everything is foot traffic. Uh, we've got, they have to go out by foot and you know, there's trees that are 200 feet from the parking lot. There's trees that are a quarter mile from the parking lot. It just depends on how energetic they are and whether they're carrying toddlers and stuff, you know, we don't do any type. wagon rides, stuff like that, because you get into such a whole liability thing. You know, man, I mean, you know, it's so easy for somebody to get hurt. So yeah, stay away from all that. We don't allow chainsaws for the same reason, you know. Now you gotta cut them with a handsaw or a sawzall or something, you know. But no chainsaws, yeah. I'm curious about, you said you're scaling the business for where you are right now. I find that interesting because, you know, any younger and I've got, you're 68, so I've declared I'm going to keep going at my current Roll Crossers, probably till I'm 70, that's 12 years. But I've also recognized... I don't know that it can be the exact same thing I'm doing and you turn the light switch off at 12 years. Oh, yeah. So you're scaling your business for who you are now. Talk about that. Well, I'm doing that, but I'm also trying to decide that if I'm going to be in my mid to late 70s when like the trees that I planted this spring. The first thing you do is quit planting. But I've got trees ordered for next spring. I've got 5,000 trees ordered. But I have to realize that those trees, albeit, and by the time they're ready to sell them, will be in my late 70s. And so the first thing I have to do is quit planting, because there's no point in doing that. There's no point in planting if I realistically know the difference between 68 and. 75 or 78 is that's a big difference. You know, I mean, it's hard enough for me now to go out there and swing a sharing knife and do a lot of the stuff that I do. Uh, and it isn't getting easier, you know, so. When did you feel the beginning of loss, uh, you know, an energy dip, what it was energy? Was it, you weren't a strong swing of the knife. Was it just you were losing emotional interest? Like what, what were the signs for you and when did you start noticing those? Well, when I was 50, I started having some back issues. So that got me to thinking. And then when I was 60, and I tore something in my shoulder, working, everything is work related. And you start realizing that one good big injury or a big illness can basically end my career. I mean, let's say that I get some kind of an illness where I just can't work anymore. Physical work, it's done. You know, so you have to kind of... So it's been... And I do have... I don't have the drive and energy I had 20 years ago, you know. At 48, I was still going... Man, I was hitting the floor with both feet in the morning. But now I just don't really feel like... I don't have the energy, but then again, I don't feel the motivation to... kill myself anymore. I really don't, you know, I mean, I work hard, but I don't work like I used to. How much of the lack of or their lesson drive and energy, how much do you think is, you know, as men, we, we go down in testosterone, we go down, how much is that? How much of it is? I just been doing the same thing forever. So I'm just naturally going to be not as Excited about the thing I've been doing forever and ever and ever. Yeah. Well, it's a real combination Obviously I don't have the stamina that I used to But I still I'm still interested in what I still like what I do I don't get up in the morning go. Oh, I've got to go out and do this or do that today I don't I don't dread working. So I think it's, it's most of it's physical. It's just a, just a reduction in energy and stamina and stuff. But I don't mind. I, I kind of got a head start on that. You know, by, I started scaling back before I really needed to, cause like I'm looking down the road seven or eight years and saying, okay, you know, what, how am I doing stuff now that am I going to still be able to do that seven or eight years down the road? Like we, I injured my shoulder digging trees. any help until I was out there. You can't get any help. You can't find people to pay to do what you're doing. Yeah, it's, you know, well, I dig them with a tree spade, but there's a lot of groundwork. There's a lot of hard work involved besides that, putting the burlap on and tying the branch up, this and that. And so I was doing it by myself. Didn't mind, it's a pretty day, I'm out there, you know. Well, I'm working on them and I just tore a little something in my shoulder because my shoulder's 60 years old. And so at that point I decided I'm, through with digging trees. I've been digging trees for at that point probably 40 some years. So by eliminating that job it makes my overall job a lot easier. I quit doing that. I used to deliver and plant and sell a lot of live trees to landscapers and garden stores and that's done now. I don't miss it, you know, so. Have you sold off land? No, it's just, It's just undeveloped land right now, no trees on it. Correct, yeah, and there's a couple reasons. One is accessibility to the parking lot. I'm trying to keep stuff up closer to the parking lot. And the other thing is that I've got some fields I've planted that... I probably should have planted in the first place. Or down in the flood plain, the creek comes up, floods and stuff. So as I've decided to scale back, I know what fields that I really don't want to plant anymore. So I used to have about 60 acres in trees. And say at that time I was fitting probably, oh gosh, 1200, 1300 trees per acre. And now I've got probably. maybe 40 acres of trees and the way I'm spacing them, it's about 1100 trees per acre. So I've got about probably two thirds of the trees that I used to have actually in the ground and growing. So interesting. So when you're done, are you grooming somebody to take over the business or are you done and you're just selling everything and moving off into high-set? That's a good question. Everybody, you know, it's funny I say, cause I get, My tree customers have been coming there for 30 years ago. So Mr. Corsi, how much longer are you going to do this? I don't know. And who's going to take it over? And I say, well, as far as I know, no one. And I don't know how many times somebody said, well, don't you have any kids? Well, I've got two kids. But they have their own life. And they've been doing it for a long time. do not want to do it and I don't, I can't say I blame them, you know. So, and nobody chose it for me when I decided to be a tree farmer. Uh, I was living out of state. I knew dad was wanting to retire. He was going to sell this farm. It's a beautiful farm. So I was 25 when I decided to do it, which is a good age because you can have a fairly long career, but like my kids are both ones over 40 ones. pushing 40, they're kind of almost too old. Right, exactly. By the time they get the hang of it, they're gonna be jacking up their shoulder. Yeah, well, like I said, I started having back issues at 50. So, but you know, the thing is doing it at age 25, which is the age where really probably a person should start doing it. I'm 25 years old and it's like, it's not exciting. You know, I mean, it's not a very glamorous life, but the older you get. the more you don't want a glamorous life. You don't want to have to travel and stay in hotels and stuff. You got little kids, you want to be home every night. And so it's kind of a, I've grown into the job a lot. And that didn't take very long, particularly with little kids. I was glad that I was home every night. I used to see these guys that flew for Delta and they're flying international routes and stuff. And I'm like, you guys got to make, because I used to have an interest in aviation. And those guys come out there and they've just flown to Europe. They had to spend the night there. They missed the kids' ball games. And they come out and they look around and they go, man, you got it made. You know, so you know how that works. The Bible has this verse I've been thinking about a lot recently. It says, make it your ambition to live a simple life and work with your hands. Yeah, well, that kind of describes mine. Yeah, that's an ambition to do that. But you're right. But it's not exciting. You know. No, Donnick, but exciting gets old. Well, I don't want exciting. Yeah, fulfilling is what does it, to feel like you're making an impact and you've got a tangible concrete product you're selling and you're on tangible concrete ground that you own and you're tapping into what people have done for generation after generation, every corner of the globe is pretty cool. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. I gave AG1 a try because I was feeling a bit sluggish, not confident I was getting all the nutrients that I felt that I needed. And I thought maybe this is an easy solution. So I drink AG1 in the morning. I love doing the morning. I do it on an empty stomach. It forces me to get 12 ounces of water into my system. I love doing something proactive and aggressive to make me feel better and at least give me peace of mind. AG1 is designed with this kind of ease in mind so you can live healthier and better without having to complicate your routine. 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Flying K Ranch has no hormones or antibiotics. So it's basically like when I go elk hunting or deer hunting or something like that. It's pure, pure meat. They raise their cattle on pastures just the way cattle like it. Flying K Ranch is a family business partnering with Ohio State Nutrition Program. beef quality assurance and certified Angus beef national, ensuring happy results for both cattle and people. That's a lot of words. Just to say this, the beef is amazing. Order it now, get it on your table over the holidays, and you will not be disappointed, because I have not. Find out more and place your orders at flyi That's flyi And now I'm hungry. So you're not sure what your end game then is, if you're selling it or if you're shutting it down or whatever, but that's- Yeah, well, I don't really want to sell the farm because, you know, it's just, I've got, I've got a couple old dogs buried there. I've got my daughter got married there. My dad's ashes are there, all that stuff. So it's not just a simple, it's my home. And, you know, ideally it'd be nice to just, since I've got such this- this nice rotation of trees coming on from stuff we planted this year right up to eight, nine. It'd be nice to hire a nursery manager to come in and do all the stuff that I do. Interesting. But that's a hard thing. Usually by the time guys are the age where they think they want to do it, they're kind of getting too old. So if you could lure a young guy in to do it in... just take over the operations without selling the farm. That would be great. Oh, fascinating. So here's the land, do it. You pay me some nominal fee for, or some fee for farming it, but your business, go. If you want to raise prices to $200, and you think, great, that'll mean me, you're still going to pay me basic land space or something like that. Well, one of my competitors actually did that. The guy that started, he had a beautiful tree farm. And And he just wanted to retire. So we, a young guy took it over and the guy has struggled immensely. I don't know what is going on, but they're, they're no longer really even a competitor because he's had so much problem, you know, so many problems. So, so, you know, that transition, sometimes it works or sometimes it doesn't and nobody does it. Exactly. Like when I came in and I bought the farm off my parents and I started doing it my way. In the beginning, my dad really thought I was Nazi, thought I was doing it the wrong way. If somebody else takes it over, they won't do it like I do it. They might do it better, they might not. Who knows? I think a fascinating phrase you said earlier on, I'm actually going to bring this to our... just people here on staff at Crossroads, this is my day job, is I love this phrase, or hate it, depending on how you look at it, quit planting. That's the line. When you say, I'm not going to plant this year, you're basically saying, I'm out in seven years, or whatever it is, quit planting. And I think that's a really good vernacular to use in whatever business you're in. As soon as you don't have the energy, to start doing things that you're not gonna reap a benefit from for seven years. Yeah. Bad, bad news. This is actually, you know, my day job is pastor of churches. This is a huge problem with churches. Churches don't want to plant anything. They just want to take people from other churches. They don't want to actually spend the time working with somebody who is an atheist or an agnostic or doesn't have church background, doesn't know the Bible. They just want to come in and, oh, let me tell you really what the Bible says. Let me give you a perfect spiritual experience for you. they're not planting. They're just trying to reap what somebody else has planted, you know, years ago, because it's harder. It's harder to do that in any line of work. So that's fresh. Quit, don't quit, or if you do quit planting, that says something. Yeah. Well, you know, the other, like my dad always said, he said, You know, he says, keep planting trees. And if you get to where you can't take care of them, he said, go out there and mow them down, just bush hog them down, which theoretically you could do. Oh, that'd be horrible. I can't do that. Right. Uh, so, but a lot of parts of the farm, different areas I've let grow up. So we've got, I've got stands of like 30 and 40 foot tall white pine, Norway spruce. That. I just basically let them grow, let them go. Now it costs me the use of that piece of ground, but if I ever quit planting, I'm going to leave as many trees grow as I can because you just don't see that around here. You don't see mature evergreen stands like that. Uh, so, uh, yeah, if I get to where I can't take care of them, I might sell what I can wholesale and then just let the rest go. You know, if I was gonna rent the ground for beans or corn for grain farming, I wouldn't do that, but it's not really a good grain farm. So you got a tree that's now 30 feet high or 20 feet high. What's the chances that Macy's or somebody's gonna come along and buy that thing, or does that never happen? Well, it... I used to sell a half dozen of those a year to local towns for their town squares and this and that. But usually they want like a 20 or 25 foot tree, which is fine, but these things are 40 foot trees. And it's just a lot of work. It's another one of those big jobs. It's like a buddy of mine said the other day, he said, it's like eating crabs. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, it's a lot of work for very little. Very little out of it. Right. You know, so. Right. Now I've done. It is. Tell my wife that. Same thing. Yes. So this year, the only big tree that I sold, I cut two. One was for our lodge. It's about a 14 foot. And then I do Kenwood Country Club's tree every year. I've been doing it for 10 or 11 years. And, you know, but I may even, I'm thinking about backing off on that one just because I just. I'm getting lazier. Yeah, right. So when you are doing the Christmas tree thing, I could think of one of two extremes you could go. One would be you're the most Christmas guy on earth because you're thinking Christmas all the time. It's literally Christmas every day for you. Or the other extreme is whatever, it's a holiday. I'm around it so much I don't think about it that much. I mean, what's Christmas like for you? Well, you know, 11 months a year and it does actually start in January. I start, I do my fertilizing in January. And, and, and so for 11 months a year, I'm just a farmer. And then once I get everything ready and I've got a really good crew that works, same guys work every year. Mike who. He's been there for 20 some years helping me since he was like 15 or 16. And so actually when I open up for tree sales, my job gets real easy because. I've got the right people doing everything else. All I have to do is just talk to people. I'm just. You know, and people expect to talk to me, you know, and they want to, they want to say, Oh, Mr. Corsias is 30 years. It's 35 years. We've been coming here. Wow. And so that's my job and, and stomping out fires. But fortunately, the last few years, there's just been no problems at all. Really? You know, I just, I just talk to people. And I recognize faces, a lot of them, I've never known their name, but I've seen them 30 times, you know, so. Yeah, that's... So yeah, actually, this is when it does kind of, I can relax and enjoy myself, is this time of year. But, and I love Christmas. You know, the thing is, when I was a kid, every house had a Christmas tree, and every tree was a real tree. So when my dad was selling trees, basically, all the churches, the Boy Scout troops, the mom and pop grocery stores, the Kroger's, everybody sold trees. Everybody had an empty lot sold trees. And Kroger's was my dad's big, he sold a bunch of Kroger's in the tri-state area. Now, in this day and age, one thing that's really hurt the tree business, obviously, is artificial trees, because they look so real. Yeah, they're And the other thing is that there's a lot of people don't, they don't observe Christmas like they used to. They don't put a tree up. And part of that may be because there's probably less really people that observe Christianity in society than there was 50 or 60 years ago. There absolutely is. And people just, they don't take the time. Our life today is so void of tradition. And this is a tradition that was really big when I was a kid. So now instead of getting a little, a little slice of this huge pie, now I've got to try to get his biggest slice being the Cincinnati area. Let's just say of a very dwindling pie. And so, you know, you got to really work hard to sell them today. You know, yeah, I hadn't thought before that you're right is, is. Christianity has declined, and there's a lot of reasons for that. It makes sense that Christmas is declining, not the holidays, we've got happy holidays. We don't have that much Merry Christmases. And so when the holiday isn't essential to your faith, it makes sense the more difficult things you wouldn't do, like get a real tree, trim the tree, all that stuff. It's difficult. There's part of why we do it isn't just because we like the... Christmas tradition, but it's because it's somewhat of a holy time of year, it's important to us. I hadn't thought about that before. Yeah, I mean, it's not, you know, going to a tree farm is not for everybody, I realize that. But anymore, just even putting a tree up is not for a lot of people. Like I said, when I was a kid, you went to friends houses, everybody had a Christmas tree, you know. No, well, putting a tree up traditionally has been a, has been the man's job, traditionally. A lot like my wife wouldn't have the strength to carry in and hoist our nine-foot tree, hoist it up. It's tough to hoist the thing up. But men are... We don't work with our hands anymore. A lot don't, yeah. There's a lot of guys who are very, very smart and very capable, but just the project of get a saw, cut off a couple inches, get it plumbed in your base, get it in, get it. A lot of guys, that'd be a stretch. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But again, you know, I all I have to do is get a I have to get a big piece of a kind of a dwindling pie. So that's kind of been my objective. And on a way you can do that is to offer a really good product, offer the full experience. You know, anybody can I mean, if they want a tree, they can go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a tree that may be a good tree. Maybe not. Might be cheaper than mine. I don't know. I don't think it's maybe not five bucks, brother. No, people don't come out there. just to get a tree. They come out for the full experience. And you know, when you're out there, you see it. I mean, people show up and they're happy and they're there to have a good time. And that's really what you're selling that to. We've got a lodge that I built. You know, nine and it's got a petting zoo in it. We serve food with on the weekends. We got guys playing acoustic music in there and stuff. So, so that's all, you know, that's you getting all of that for the $85 price. You are getting a bigger slice of the pie next year. You're at least going to sell four more trees to me and my kids. That's for amazing. So, uh, for next year, because probably too late for many of us, how do they find you next year? Where is it? Where do you go? Give us an advertisement. What part of Cincinnati? If someone lives in the Tri-State region, address, phone number, website, whatever. Well, we have a website, corsetreefarm.com. We're actually in- C-O-R-S-I, treefarm.com, good? We're actually in, we're in Western Brown County. We're just... between Bethel and Hammersville. So, and we're just a mile and a half off State Route 125. So it's a straight shot out 125. It gets you within a mile and a half of us and you make one turn or you can come over from 32. We're fairly accessible. That's on the east side of Pittsburgh then, or east side of Cincinnati. Yeah, yeah. All right, good. Outside the 270 for Luluf on the east side. Yeah, we're about actually from 275, we're 20 miles from there. Straight out 125. And so we're fairly accessible. It's an easy drive from most parts of the city. You can be there in an hour or slightly over Northern Kentucky, you know, 45 minutes from Fort Thomas or whatever. And that's where a lot of my customers come from. You know, I sell trees to a lot of local people, but a lot of my customers come from down in the Cincinnati area or 25 miles from Fort Thomas. Well, it's about a 45 minute drive. Yeah, it's just, you know, my daughter lives there, so I've made that, it's an easy drive. I'll tell you a little funny story, a quick one, I'll try to make it quick. A couple years ago, my girlfriend came over and she said, this couple's, this family's here from St. Louis to get a tree. So she said, come on. I said, hey, I said, you know, it's great to have you here. You know, you got family here. They said, no. I said, well, what brings you to Cincinnati? They said, to get a tree from St. Louis. I said, you gotta be kidding me. I said, no, it's tradition with us. I kind of blew my mind. Well, it ended up, I had a new guy working for me this Christmas, and we were talking Sunday night, after we got done working, we were all sitting in the lodge and unwinding, and he says, yeah, we came from St. Louis every year to get a tree here. And I said, I talked to some people from St. Louis a couple years ago. I said, was that your family? He goes, yeah, they did that 11 times. He used to live close by to the farm. They moved to St. Louis and actually either before or after that, they lived in Indy, but for 11 years they came from St. Louis to get a tree from my farm and back. And now they've moved back to Cincinnati. So he worked for me this year. Just the tradition. They wanted to keep the tradition alive. Oh, he's, he's more passionate about than I am. Yeah. Wow. No, you're supposed to say when I say that, no, it's because my trees are the best. That's what you're supposed to say. Well, if you ask him, that's what he would tell you, you know, and I'm proud of, I'm proud of what I do, you know, but we all do it. All of us growers do it different and I'll sometimes I'll go, I've done it several times, go to a competitor's place. I'll go in, they don't know who I am. I'll go in, I'll buy a tree, cut it down. I watch their entire process so I can maybe pick up some hints or whatever, as a little industrial espionage. That's cool. But they probably do it to me too. Yeah, right, absolutely. Sheldon, is there anything else you want to talk about that we haven't talked about? No, I mean, it's not a fascinating story. My life isn't. It's different. A lot of people thank me for what I'm doing. And not to me people get thanked. for what they do. And I get thanked a bunch. And that means a lot. I'll tell you one more little quick story, if I might. I was out there in the spring one time, it was after Christmas, it was like April or May, and I see a little pink pair of women's sketchers, tennis shoes, stuck in the mud, a thousand feet from the parking lot, stuck in the stitch. And I kind of laughed about it, you know, I go, man, somebody walked up there barefoot and did that a winter. So anyway, the next year I just was talking to a random customer and the guy said, yeah, this Christmas is a little different for us. He said, we don't have the kids and I are here, we don't have their mother with us, she passed away. And I'm going, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that, you know. And he said, we had the biggest laugh last year because he said, we were out there and she stepped out of her tennis shoes in a ditch back there. And I mean, what are the odds I'd even be talking to this guy? But I said, I saw him. I said, yeah. So, you know, but, and yeah, when Christmas is, I'm sure, you know, it's a very emotional time of year, so sometimes you feel like you're a bartender, a counselor or something to, you know, with people talk to you about stuff that's. sometimes kind of private like that, which is kind of neat. Yeah, well, I find your job fascinating. You said you don't. I find it fascinating. Oh, thank you. I find it heartwarming. I find it necessary. So brother, thanks for being faithful. Thanks for pushing forward. Thanks for showing us what good old fashioned work looks like and serving people, serving families and memories. Really, it means a lot to me. I appreciate that. Corsetreefarm.com, C-O- Friends, this has been Ben Dyrdau. I was thinking this might be one of our shorter ones. That has to be a nice little short pop off. I want to keep going for like a half hour. I'm utterly fascinated. Yeah. So this is the aggressive life, right? Aggressive life doesn't mean the flashy life. It just means there's something that you're going to do that somebody else may not want to do. Sheldon is doing something that other people don't want to do. And he's living his life and making adjustments. It's really good. What's the thing that you want to do that isn't going to be understood by others, but serves a really cool niche and brings you fulfillment? I hope you find that. I hope you do that. I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a great new year. We'll see you next year. Welcome to The Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes, and live events over at bryantome.com. My new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.