(upbeat music) (upbeat music continuing) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag".

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Do you like trees?

I mean, come on, who doesn't like trees?

Well, today, we're gonna talk to the purveyor of getting trees to your property.

(laughing) That's pretty good.

I love that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We're gonna talk with Chris and Marlee Harford.

Harford, with no T. - Yes, that's right.

- Yes.

You guys are from Mazon, or is it Mayzon?

- Mazon.

- Where is Mazon in the great State of Illinois?

- We're about 60, 70 miles southwest of Chicago, so right south of Morris and pretty close to Joliet.

- Okay.

And Chris, you grew up on a family farm, correct?

- Yeah, I grew up on the same family farm that I now still run in Mazon, and still run the farm there.

- Okay.

So growing up, did you know you were gonna come back to the farm?

- Yeah.

I mean, I always knew that I wanted to come back at farm at some point.

I knew that I wanted to stay, and living in Mazon, and living in my hometown, and it was just a mechanism of figuring out how to do that.

- [Rob] Yeah.

Is Mazon nice?

- Yeah.

It's a very, very small town.

- You have a dollar store?

- We have a Dollar General, just recently.

- Oh, fantastic.

Of all the people that live in Mazon, what's the person that you like the least?

(Chris laughing) I know somebody came to mind.

- You know what?

I don't think, I think everybody in that town is wonderful, so.

There's only about a thousand of 'em.

(chuckling) - Okay.

And Marlee, you did not grow up in Mazon?

- I did not.

I grew up in Coal City, just a little bit near Mazon.

- Okay.

How'd you guys meet?

- Just through mutual friends.

- [Rob] That's kinda boring.

- Yeah.

(laughing) That's not that exciting.

- Just mutual friends.

We hung out together for a while, and then... - Next thing you know.

- Started dating, and got married.

- Who asked who?

Who laid down the groundwork?

And don't hide.

I know one of you was throwing vibes out there.

- I'm gonna let you answer that.

- Oh.

I'm gonna say Christian.

- Yeah, of course you would, yeah.

(all laughing) And how long you been married?

- Since 2014, so eight years.

- Okay.

Think it's gonna last?

- I think so.

- I think so.

- That's good.

You always take a gamble when you ask that question.

(all laughing) Okay, let's jump into, well, the reason that we're talking to you is because you've got a very cool company.

It's called iTrees.

- iTrees.com, yes.

- Okay, let's go back to how this began, because you were saying there really wasn't enough acreage for you to come back to the farm.

- Yeah.

So my dad was farming the family farm, you know, several generations.

And when I went off to college, I went to U of I in Champaign, and I knew, like I said, I knew I wanted to come back to the farm, I knew I wanted to come back to Mazon.

- [Rob] What'd you study there?

- I studied advertising and marketing, actually.

Nothing really to do with ag, but again, I wasn't really, I knew that I was just kinda, I always wanted to start a business and be an entrepreneur, and move back.

My dad was still farming.

And you know, we're just small farmers, so we don't really have enough acreage to support me and him both doing it together.

My sister, my oldest sister and her husband, had taken some of my parents' acreage and started a tree nursery.

They started that probably when I was in high school, so I had already worked there.

I'd worked there through high school.

So that was up and going.

And when I got outta school, I came back.

I moved back to the farm, and like I said, I needed to find some other way to make some money.

So, you know, they had the trees right there, and I thought, you know, I can just build a website, I was pretty good at computers and technology, I could build a website and just start selling these trees up in the Chicago suburbs.

Luckily, we're pretty close to the suburbs of Chicago.

- Sixty miles from, was that downtown Chicago?

- Yeah.

But I mean, we're right outside Plainfield, Joliet, Shorewood, a lot of population.

So I thought, you know, I'll just build this website.

People can go online, they can buy their trees, and I'll come, I'll get 'em from my sister, grown right on our family farm, and I'll go deliver and install 'em.

And that's what I did.

I started that in 2006, 2007.

And yeah, it kinda took off.

I mean, there wasn't a lot of people, or anybody, selling trees online.

- Really?

- Not really.

Not big trees.

- Are there now?

- Not a lotta people selling big, large trees.

- What do you consider a big tree?

- Well, we go up to four inch caliper, which is the diameter of a trunk of a tree.

So that's around-- - Four inch?

- Yeah.

- Yup.

- [Rob] So the camera.

So about like-- - Yeah.

It's about 18 to 20 feet tall.

Like a maple, a four inch caliper maple, would be around 18 to 20 feet tall.

- Most of the trees we sell are in the range of two-and-a-half to four inch.

- Okay.

I'm gonna say that, you know, you get like a 18-foot tree, right, and it gets in your yard.

As the customer, you're disappointed, because you think, "Twenty foot tall, that thing's huge," but a tree doesn't look that big.

- Yeah, I mean, it definitely, it's big enough that it looks like it's been there for a while, and I think that's the main thing.

You know, if you're putting in a smaller potted tree, that might be only eight, 10 feet tall, that looks pretty scrawny.

But these are big enough that they have some substance.

Yeah, they're not a 40-foot tall, 50-foot tall, fully mature tree, but-- - What is the biggest tree size that can be transplanted?

- I think you can, I mean, with the right equipment, you can go as big as you want.

- Let's say Elon Musk wanted to transplant a full-sized oak tree.

Could it possibly be done?

- It's been done, yeah.

They've transplanted hundred-year old oak trees before.

- You're kidding me.

- Yeah.

They go around and dig a trench around the drip line, and then they can kind of jack it up, and just like you would move a house, really, you know what I mean?

They can move 'em like that.

But for the more common, more commonly moved large trees would be moved with a spade truck.

So it'd be like a semi with a big tree spade on it.

- And describe what a tree spade is.

- A tree spade is a hydraulic piece of equipment that's got three blades, or four blades, that kinda go into the ground around the tree and slice the roots and kinda take that whole root ball and just pick it up outta the ground.

- Gotcha.

- So a tree spade can only, usually, it's gonna be difficult to get a tree spade truck in the back of a yard, especially like a suburban yard.

So that's why we only do about four-inch caliper, because our machine, which is a Toro Dingo, is turf-friendly and it can-- - Whoa.

Whoa!

(Marlee laughing) What did you say?

- It's called a Toro Dingo, and it's turf-friendly.

- Is it Australian?

- It has treads.

- No, surprisingly.

- I'm not sure why it's called a Dingo, but I assume it's because it's small and compact, and-- - Just like a dingo.

- Like a dingo.

(Chris and Marlee laughing) - So these are like the walk behind?

- Yeah, walk behind skid steer, basically.

- Yeah.

'Cause people are touchy about their, - Their yards.

- Their grass.

- Yeah, they don't wanna get the turf torn up.

And, you know, a lotta times we gotta fit through three-foot gates, or...

I've bought trees.

I mean, we plant trees downtown Chicago.

I've brought trees up elevators, I've brought trees up and down stairs.

- [Rob] You're kidding me.

Really?

- Yeah.

I've brought 'em anywhere you can think of bringing a tree.

- Do you ever get to a place and they're like, "Oh yeah, we can just bring that through my neighbor's yard.

I'm sure he won't care."

- It happens all the time.

- Really?

- Yeah, and usually it's fine, because-- - Usually we figure it out.

- we can get through, and it's alright.

And we just go through.

The point that we want is to have the tree there after we leave, like we've never been there before.

So we don't wanna leave any treads in the yard, we don't wanna leave dirt all over the place.

We just want the tree to be there, and they get to enjoy it out their back window, or when they're sitting on their patio.

- Okay, you're in Chicago, in the suburbs.

There's lots of stuff under the ground.

Do you guys have to call JULIE, or whoever, to get it marked?

- Yeah.

Yeah, we have to call JULIE.

They gotta get the underground marked, which sometimes is, I mean, there's stuff all over.

So that is one of the bigger hurdles, is trying to... You know, just because a person wants a tree right there doesn't mean it can go right there.

- [Rob] Yeah, that's true.

- Or people want, they got a tree taken out, and they wanna put the new tree right in, back in the same spot.

But you know, there's still a stump underground, so, (laughing) so that's one of the hard parts about-- - Can you do that?

Can you take the stump out?

- Yeah.

Yeah, they can be ground out.

- [Rob] Is that good, though, to plant a tree right where-- - No.

Not the best idea.

Trees release chemicals into the soil, just like any other plant that are gonna discourage competition.

- Oh.

The tree wars.

- Yeah, (laughing) exactly.

Not all trees, but we generally just say if you can be three, four feet away from the old stump, that would be the best.

- You ever hit anything with your tree spade?

- Yeah, we've hit stuff all the time.

- Even like what you call, when JULIE is like the, I don't know, that's Ameren, right?

I don't know if Chicago has something different, - Yeah, 94.

- but it's when you call out the people, and they mark the underground electric and gas lines, and all that stuff, do they make mistakes, and you guys end up hitting stuff?

- Yeah, they do sometimes.

Luckily, it's few and, you know, not common.

I would say a couple of times a year maybe something happens, but usually it's 'cause it's not marked correctly.

We actually don't, when we plant in yards and in the city, we don't use a spade at all.

- [Rob] What do you use?

- When the trees are dug at the nursery, the spade is used there, and then it's balled and burlapped in a wire basket in a burlap sack, and then we hand plant them usually.

- Oh, 'cause you would have to go in there with a spade and cut a hole, right?

- Yeah, exactly.

So we'll either use, we got an auger on our Toro Dingo.

(all chuckling) - You just like saying that.

- Yeah.

(laughing) We got a 30 inch auger that we can't use, but most of the time we end up just using shovels, because by the time you unload all the equipment, you could have the hole dug.

- Yeah, but I mean that's like physical work.

That's dumb.

- Our guys are great.

- Yeah.

We have a great crew of guys.

They've been with us for a long time, so.

- So did you build the website?

- The current iteration I designed, and I hired programmers to build.

This is about our fourth or fifth different website.

The first one I did build myself, because I had no money.

So I built that, and then this iteration, like I said, I designed, and then I had outside programmers build it.

- Okay.

And does your, I don't even know, do you have competition?

- Yeah, I mean, we have competition.

Well, you can speak to that.

- Well, you asked earlier if anyone was selling trees online.

Not any like local landscape contractors that are planting trees I know of are selling them online the way that you can go on our website and check out and actually purchase it online.

There are some garden centers that will have their stock and their inventory on their website, where then you can order them, but you're not gonna order and pay, and have it delivered and planted.

So I wouldn't say that.

We definitely have competition as landscape contractors that will go and plant a tree, or plant, you know, doing hardscape or anything like that.

But as far as having our website, someone goes on, orders a tree, and then we schedule to have it planted, I'm not sure that there's anyone locally doing that.

- Yeah, we actually, you know, you say our competition is landscape contractors, but we actually work with a lotta landscape contractors.

They might wanna come in and put the patio in, but they don't wanna deal with two or three trees.

So then they have us come in and do that part of it.

- Okay.

You probably don't, I mean, like the Lowe's and the Menards that are, Walmarts that are selling trees, that's probably not like your competition, is it?

- I mean, I would say it definitely, it definitely takes some business that could happen away, because-- - Are their trees crap?

You can say it.

- Yeah, pretty much.

- I mean, you could tell when you go look at it, the sickly things that have been outta the ground for probably a month.

- They're typically not locally grown.

And that's the biggest thing with trees.

And we only source trees... Granted, most of our trees come from my sister's nursery, but we buy from other nurseries as well.

But they have to be grown locally, because they gotta be used to our climate, they gotta be used to, you know, obviously, soils can differ, but they need to be used to our climate zone.

And a lotta the trees come into the...

The big box stores are coming out of Texas or South Carolina, where they have a longer growing season.

They can grow 'em faster down there.

- And then when you put 'em in the ground here, they're gonna stress and suffer more, 'cause they're not used to the winters.

- Yeah.

A lot of them too are grown strictly in pots, which can be done right, but if you just put 'em in a pot and leave 'em, the root starts spinning.

And even if you take 'em outta that pot and plant 'em in the ground, they can suffocate themselves eventually over time, because the roots just wanna keep spiraling like that.

- [Rob] Gotcha.

- It can be done correctly by a good nursery that's taking care of it, but you know, a lotta 'em are just kinda commodity trees.

- Your customers are... Like, you get a call, are they buying just one tree, or do most of 'em buy multiple?

- Mainly one to two trees.

Homeowners are our main customers, so one to two trees.

They had a shade tree removed.

They need it back, so they put up a new one.

We do sell to homeowners associations and stuff like that, with larger commercial type jobs, but our main customer is a homeowner, with one to two trees.

- [Rob] What's the most popular?

- The most popular would be maples, and I would say oaks for the most part are are gonna be the ones that-- - Autumn blaze maple are a really popular one.

And river birch.

We sell a lot of river birch.

- What about the honeysuckle?

You don't get much?

- No.

- No.

- I hate that tree.

- Yeah, that's why.

(laughing) - I hate that tree so much.

- They're kinda considered more of a nuisance, I guess.

- Ya think?

They're literally the worst thing that the Good Lord put on this planet.

(all chuckling) - You know, it's interesting, because some of these trees that are popular now, especially from municipalities that want really diverse, 'cause you know, they want, there's been a problem over the years where the municipalities were planting all the same kinda tree, and then a disease comes in and wipes 'em out.

So they wanna diversify.

So they're bringing back a lotta these older varieties, like Osage Orange, which is actually a hedge tree, are actually becoming popular now.

- Don't you dare.

Don't you dare tell me that you're growing hedge trees.

- Yeah.

Seedless.

Without the hedges apples.

- People don't want the balls?

- No.

And so honey locust is a popular one too, but these are thornless-- - Honey locust?

- Yeah.

Thornless, podless.

- They're a great tree, and they don't have the thorns and the pods.

- I don't know what's coming to this world.

If you don't know what a honey locust tree is, it's Satan invented a tree.

Literally, there are thorns on there like that, and you even just like the slightest thing, it burns for hours.

- Yeah, I've had 'em go through tractor tires too.

But these, the ones that grow in the nursery settings, are cultivars that are thornless.

- Do you ever see "The Lord of the Rings"?

- Yeah.

(laughing) - Yeah.

So you know in the, well, the original trilogy, Bilbo Baggins' house, they have an English oak on top of his tree.

It was prevalent in the books.

But English oaks don't grow in New Zealand, which is where they filmed the movie, so they actually cut down an English oak, and they built it back, and then they hired interns to put leaves on this tree.

So the tree, I know nobody cares about this, - I'm a huge "Lord of the Rings" fan.

- The tree was in the original movie for like three seconds.

It was $12 million to get on there.

So you should be doing something else.

- You know what, it's funny, it's interesting.

I have brought trees to movie sets in Chicago before.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Do you, what, do you take 'em back?

- Yeah.

- We've taken 'em back before.

Sometimes we've donated, or they have donated them, and then we have either picked them up and planted them somewhere, or they've kept them.

We've planted and delivered trees about everywhere you can imagine, so.

- Oh, that's really cool.

- Yeah.

- A few years back, we delivered downtown Chicago, to a store.

They wanted them as their display for Christmas.

So there was like 15 to 20 trees that we brought into the store, made 'em look nice.

- Up the service elevator.

- Up the escalators.

- These were spruce trees.

They were supposed to be living Christmas trees.

- Do you do a lot of pines?

- Yeah.

Pines, spruce, yeah.

- Alright, let's switch gears a little bit.

For some reason, you think it is fun to do a podcast.

(Chris and Marlee laughing) Why?

Nobody listens.

- No, that is true.

- Seriously, nobody listens to a podcast anymore.

- You know, it just started as a hobby.

So me and my friend, Jerry, Jerry Snyder, we started our podcast, and the main reason was is because we're kinda nerds.

We like to talk about "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" and comic books and stuff like that.

And growing up in a rural community at the time we did, it just wasn't, there wasn't a lotta outlet for that kinda stuff.

So we started this podcast.

And yeah, that's what we do.

We review movies, we talk about pop culture, stuff like that.

- And what's your thoughts on that, Marlee?

- I mean, I think it's great.

I think it's fun to listen to.

- He could have a lotta bad habits, couldn't he?

- That's not a bad thing.

It's just like, takes a little bit of his time once a week, and it's good.

- Oh, you do it weekly?

- Weekly, yeah.

- Oof!

Alright, go ahead and plug it.

What's it called?

Where can people find it?

- It's called Snarf Talk Podcast, and it's on all the podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify.

We film live.

We're on Facebook Live and YouTube Live when we do our episodes.

- Oh, wow.

Okay.

Alright, I will have to check that out.

- Now we can get a, actually get some listeners.

(laughing) - Yeah.

You could get sponsored by iTrees.

That's a nice...

So that's your logo.

Who came up with that?

- I did.

I designed that, yeah, I did graphic design in college.

It was part of my major.

- The i, it's a leaf.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you got the typical promo stuff and that, so I mean, is this...

If I order a tree, is this, you kinda make the whole deal, you bring 'em a hat and all that stuff, and make people feel important?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

We send out packages to customers, and-- - Thank you packages.

- They all love it.

- Okay.

I kinda wanna buy a tree now.

- We got you.

- Absolutely.

- You're in our service area.

- Might buy.

I mean, I don't necessarily wanna pay for one, but you know.

- We'll cut you a deal.

- So as a farmer, right, I'm cheap, and I've got a backhoe, so we'll go out and we'll, like, in a timber, and we'll dig up a tree and we'll put it in the house.

I'd say 50% success rate.

As far as you guys, what's a success rate of transplant a tree and it growing?

- Well, all our trees are warrantied for their one, two, or three years.

But what is it, about 98%?

- Yeah, I think we have like a 3% replacement rate, so.

- Ninety-seven percent.

I mean, trees will-- - That's huge.

- be stressed, and sometimes we'll lose 'em, but it's not bad.

- The biggest part of success with trees is when they're dug, so making sure the species is dug in the right season at the right time.

- I heard it was any month that ended in R. - Depends on the tree.

Some don't like to be dug in fall at all.

Some can only be dug in spring, and they all need to be dug when they're in dormancy.

- [Marlee] Yep.

So like right now.

Right now, all the trees will start being dug out of the nursery ground, and then we will start planting 'em the end of April, beginning of May.

But as long as you have the tree out of the ground before it leafs or flowers, you can pretty much plant it whenever.

- You can hold it.

You can hold it all the way to the fall.

- Right.

Just watering it?

- Just watering it, yeah.

- Doing stuff like that.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

How'd you learn all this?

- Trial and error.

(laughing) - Yeah?

- No I mean, that was partially it.

Honestly, I grew up helping my sister and her brother-in-law start their nursery, and working there.

And we all learned it together, kinda.

My dad too helped my sister in starting the nursery.

And as far as the iTree side of it, I mean, I completely just, that was a huge gamble.

I just started it from scratch, knowing really nothing.

- Alright, Marlee, tell me about the goats.

- Oh, the goats.

So my son, who is nine, he's in 4H, so this year we decided to get some goats to show for 4H.

So we actually got the baby goats on Saturday of this past week.

- So it's a new venture.

- It's new.

(laughing) It's been going okay.

(laughing) - I built a nice little electric fence in some timber, and had a little shed.

- For baby goats?

- Yeah.

- You got the old 220 running through that sucker?

They're goats.

They'll get through that.

- Yeah, they ran right through it.

Immediately.

We opened the door and they ran right through it.

I spent two hours chasing 'em around, getting 'em in there.

And my youngest, my five-year old, accidentally let our 11-year old husky out when we were trying to corral these goats.

- [Rob] This is a family show.

- [Marlee] That's what we were thinking when he got let out.

- He herded 'em up and got 'em back in the shed.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it was crazy.

- Okay.

It's pretty crazy.

That's better than the way I thought that story was gonna go.

- You and me both.

- We thought the same.

- Are you gonna milk the goats?

Are you gonna ride the goats?

What are you gonna do with the goats?

- I'm hoping gonna get rid of the goats after the 4H Fair.

- Okay, so they're, I mean, and again, you live close to Chicago, so that's where the goat market is.

- That's right.

- Okay.

- I have no idea what we're doing.

- We don't really know what we're gonna do.

We're gonna show 'em and... - Maybe you explain this to your kids.

- We have.

- I have, many times.

- [Rob] How many kids you got?

- Three.

We have a nine-year old boy, a seven year-old girl, and a five-year-old boy.

- Okay.

And what do y'all like to do for fun as a family?

- We like to go to the movies.

We're big movie-goers.

- Do they still do that?

In the theaters?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I mean, we like to do it.

It's definitely less attendance these days, but it's getting there.

- But all the movies are horrible anymore.

- Yeah.

You know, we saw, what did we go?

Last weekend we saw "Ant Man".

That was pretty good.

- Was it?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- I heard the bad reviews too, but it was pretty good.

- Well, because I'm a big Marvel guy, but I've been widely disappointed in what, a phase four, or whatever it is.

- I agree.

I'm the same.

- Yeah.

- This was the first one I thought that was actually pretty good.

- It's better than "She Hulk".

- Yeah.

- [Marlee] Yeah (chuckling) - You see this cup right here?

This was better than... You could put a camera on this for two hours, it would be better than "She Hulk".

- Yeah, that's right.

(Marlee and Chris laughing) - Sorry.

Sorry if you're big into "She Hulk", alright.

Alright, so if people wanna buy a tree, tell me where they go.

- They're gonna go to itrees.com, and go on the website, search all sorts of trees.

We have over a hundred different species of trees that they can order, and they're gonna be able to see all types of information on each tree, and put it in their cart, and check out.

- And you said people that watch us get a 50% PBS discount.

That's really nice of you.

(Marlee chuckling) - We'll do a 10% PBS discount.

- Maybe.

Yeah.

There you go.

- There you go.

(all laughing) - I really like it, because it is a difficult conversation.

It's a difficult time when people want to come back to a farm and there's not enough room, happens more times than not, when people can figure out a way to make that work, like yourselves.

Obviously, thinking outside the box, you know, with your sister planting the trees, and you guys figuring out how to sell them, I think it's a fantastic story of how people are still able to thrive and survive in agriculture, and start the next generation.

- Yeah.

Absolutely.

I mean, I was fortunate that I had the opportunity to eventually take over the farm when my dad retired, and then was fortunate that Marlee was able to step in and take over iTrees, so.

- Whether she wanted to or not.

(Marlee and Chris laughing) Okay.

I would like to order a hedge tree, with seeds.

- You'll have to get on the list on that.

They're pretty popular.

- That is the, that's so dumb.

You can't trim 'em.

They're the hardest.

- Yeah.

- But they're so cool when they're growing.

- There's farmers watching this right now that are literally, they're heads are spinning, that people are actually planting hedge trees on purpose.

Alright.

Guys, thank you very much, Chris and Marlee Harford, with no T. Go check out itrees.com, and get yourself a new tree in your yard.

Guys, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

(upbeat music)