Tree farm offers variety of options

Country Acres Tree Farm owner Wayne Larsen got his start planting trees when he was moving around the country.

Before moving to Tea and also working for the school district as its operations manager, Larsen worked as petroleum engineer for Chevron and lived in Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and California. Every time he and his wife moved to a new place, they would plant new trees.

“About every four years we would get transferred somewhere and every time we moved, we planted a bunch of trees and redid our yard and then about the time it was going really good we’d move and start over,” Larsen said. “We got pretty good at growing those types of things.”

Larsen grew up on a wheat farm near Colome. Starting a tree farm near Tea was a way for him to farm again. He started growing trees near Tea 22 years ago and when he left Chevron, the trees were big enough to start selling.

He started out by buying a tree spade and moving trees.

“My original intent was to grow larger sized trees out in the field and then I could move them with my tree mover,” he said.

“Everybody wants something instantly,” he added.

Today, he continues to move trees, but he also sells potted and balled and burlaped trees. He offers shade trees, ornamentals, evergreens, shrubs, perennials and fruit trees.

Some of Larsen’s favorites are the red maples and red oaks because they have some pretty fall color.

“They do pretty well in this area. We have some pretty tough soils to deal with. They do fairly well in this particular soil we have around here,” he said.