Phil and Bonnie Marquardt decided to brave the cold and snow Tuesday as blizzard conditions descended on southeastern Minnesota.

With a saw and a long pole, the two trudged through the freshly fallen snow until something caught their eye.

It was a pine tree. Minutes later, after Phil sawed it down, it was their Christmas tree.

The Marquardts had traveled from Janesville, Minn., to Budd’s Christmas Tree Farm in Clarks Grove.

Paul Budd has been running the tree farm north of Albert Lea since 1977, with sales starting in 1983. In a good year, he might sell 2,000 trees, but a typical season sees between 900 and 1,000 sales.

Phil and Bonnie were just looking for that one special tree Tuesday, which they’ve done at Budd’s for almost a decade running.

Using the pole to make sure their tree of choice would fit under their 9-foot ceiling, the Marquardts carefully inspected several pines.

The one that caught their eye was a good, healthy fir-basalm mix, but possibly too tall. Phil, however, said that with a little work, it would be a perfect fit and a perfect tree.

“It’s easier to make them shorter than longer,” he noted.

The tree of choice was then loaded into a truck and, with a little help from Budd, the Marquardts were off.

Budd said it is the people he sees every year — like Phil and Bonnie — that make his job so fun.

“It’s a great place to visit,” he said of his 120-acre farm.

There are about 12,000 to 14,000 trees at Budd’s, but not all of them are for sale. Many of the trees are tiny saplings that will need many years until they are fit for Christmas.

The for-sale trees are all marked with tags, designating their variety and price. Customers can have Budd help them take down their tree, but many decide to take a saw and try it themselves.

“People like the challenge,” Budd said.

And there are certainly a lot of folks in the area who go for the challenge at Budd’s.

The owner said he gets must of his customers from Albert Lea, Austin and Owatonna, but a number of small town folks stop by too. There is also the occasional Minnepolitan who remembers Budd’s tree farm from their childhood and still makes the trip.

Budd said many of his customers come back year after year, including many who’ve gotten trees ever since 1983. Budd keeps in touch with these loyal shoppers every fall by sending out mailers, reminding them that Christmas tree season is fast approaching. Bonnie Marquardt said she appreciated the gesture this year.

Usually, the big wave of tree shoppers comes to Budd’s during Thanksgiving weekend and the weekend after. The next few weeks are sporadically busy, with people like the Marquardts who put their trees up a bit later stopping by.

But for Budd, running a Christmas tree farm means a lot more than working 30 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

He starts planting saplings in spring, knowing that years from now the farm will need a supply of trees to replace those sold today.

Come August, Budd is shaping and pruning his trees. There is also plenty of mowing to be done around the farm.

After that, he starts tagging and pricing those trees that will soon be for sale.

The fall is also a good time to start making wreaths to be sold around Christmas.

All told, the farm is quite a chore. Budd started doing it while working as a teacher because he said he wanted to try something on his own.

He imagined possibly going back into teaching or doing it on top of the farming, but that hasn’t happened — Budd’s Christmas Tree Farm is basically a full-time job.

“There isn’t a whole lot of downtime,” Budd said.

That’s OK with Budd, though. He doesn’t make as much money as he used to, and sometimes trees can be lost — like during a 1990 ice storm that almost wiped out the business — but Budd said he is happy working for himself.

“It’s been a great business,” he added.