Hidden away, up a path and past a tiny lake in the woods, is a lovely and hallowed place at Pilchuck Secret Valley Christmas Tree Farm.
It’s a part of the Arlington area farm visitors aren’t apt to see as they hunt for perfect trees to cut and take home. There, several giant noble firs — 75-footers — stand majestically over the moist earth.
These are special trees. Stanley Dierck, who operated the farm for 40 years, took cones from the towering nobles and in his greenhouse grew the seeds into baby trees.
This is the farm’s first Christmas season without Dierck, who died in April at age 76.
Today, the farm on leased land is run by Stanley Dierck’s son, 55-year-old Paul Dierck. This year, a third generation is involved. Paul and Linda Dierck’s grown sons, Andrew and Adam, are helping with tree sales, which end this weekend at the farm.
Stanley Dierck is gone, yet longtime customers recognize his face in pictures displayed in the farm shed, where a fireplace and hot cocoa offer warmth on chilly days. In the hidden place, near the huge nobles, a wreath-decorated memorial and a plaque honor the man who spent much of his life working with the trees.
“I feel close to him here,” said Donna Dierck, Stanley’s widow. The Marysville widow joined her son Paul and grandson Andrew on a walk Friday to the memorial site. Her husband’s ashes were scattered in this place he loved.
“This was one of my dad’s favorite spots,” said Paul Dierck, pointing out the area’s Nordman and Korea varieties of fir trees.
Years ago, Donna and Stanley Dierck operated Christmas tree lots. “We had them from Bellevue to Mount Vernon,” she said.
When they met in the summer of 1953, Stanley was studying art at the University of Washington. They married in 1954.
All his life, Stanley Dierck was keen on art and nature. He was an abstract painter and made glass art. Glass jewelry he crafted was sold at the tree farm over the years. “He used to carve a lot, wood and soapstone,” Donna Dierck said.
Today, grandson Andrew Dierck carries on the artistic tradition. A 1997 graduate of Marysville-Pilchuck High School, he is home for Christmas from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. His interest is film production.
Paul Dierck started working with his dad in the tree business after finishing high school in 1973. Early on with the tree lots, they’d buy trees from other suppliers. “Then we got smart and started growing them ourselves,” Paul Dierck said. His father developed an expertise in exotic trees,including Turkish and balsam firs.
Tree lots, Paul Dierck said, are disappearing due to competition from groceries and other big chain stores. Like his father, Paul Dierck prefers seeing families out in the woods on their annual quests. “It’s an outing. It makes them feel good,” he said. At the tree lots, he said, “people would come in a big rush.”
“With U-cut, people come from the city dressed for the weather. They want the woods and farm atmosphere. City people don’t get that anymore,” Paul Dierck said.
It’s a beautiful place, two miles up a road with woods all around. It is little wonder that Stanley Dierck chose to be at the farm winter and summer, tending to his trees.
“He worked every day,” Paul Dierck said. “There was always something to do — shear, fertilize and mow,” Donna Dierck said.
More than a livelihood, for Stanley Dierck it was a place he loved. “I think it was the peace and quiet, being amongst the trees,” his widow said.
For Donna Dierck, this is a sad Christmastime, her first in many years without Stanley.
“I told Paul I wasn’t going to have a tree this year — but I have one,” she said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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