Milt Yakee Tree FarmWe have our own Paul Bunyan right here in Fishers. Well, he might not be a hundred feet tall, and he doesn’t have a blue ox that measures 42 axe handles. But he does have four cute dogs that are willing to help when they are allowed. Besides, taking care of four acres of trees nearly single-handedly is no mortal feat.

Milt Yakee and his wife Jane moved to Fishers in 1978. “We wanted a cabin in the woods, and that’s what we got. That’s all we ever wanted really,” Milt explained. He continued to work at Fort Harrison while Jane was still working at Dow Chemical. A few years later, Milt found himself planting trees around four of the acres in his 12 acre lot.

Back then the Town of Fishers didn’t have 60,000 residents; more like 2,000. Milt remembered back to the good ole’ days. “Oh, I could get the paper out there on the road, stand in the road and read the sports section if I wanted to. It was paved, but there just wasn’t any traffic. It seems to me there was around 1,800 people here,” Milt remembered.

The Yakee Tree Farm, on 106th Street just west of Cumberland Road, officially opened for business around 1987. Milt has cut nearly 3,000 trees since then for residents of Fishers. Not only does the tree farm have fresh cut Christmas trees, but they also have many different kinds of trees for your front or back yard. Besides having healthy and nice looking trees, Milt has taken care of them in a special way. “We’re environmentally friendly. I bet I’ve used a total of four gallons of pesticide or herbicide in 21 years. That’s not very much,” Milt said. He showed a white pine that has a disease which he used to treat with natural oil. Milt soon realized that the oil might affect the ladybugs, which eat off the tress, so he quit using it.

After talking with Milt for a while, you can tell spirituality plays an important role in his life. He explained that God is really the only one who knows what affects the trees, soil and ecosystem in general.

While sitting in their cabin in front of the old wood-burning stove, we heard his wife speak up from the other side of their home, “Hey what is that? Is your little black book over here on the floor?”
“I don’t know,” Milt quickly came back. “Well there’s less of it now,” Jane said. The little black book wasn’t filled with the numbers of sixty year old ladies in Fishers, but spiritual sayings, or as Milt calls them, “sign sayings.” If it wasn’t for the naughty puppy dog chewing on the book, we wouldn’t have learned that Milt is the one who changes the sign every week at the Fishers United Methodist Church at 116th Street and Cumberland Road. His little black book is filled with positive messages, which he spells out on the sign nearly every week.

That’s not the only funny thing that can happen at the tree farm. A few years ago a family brought their young son to help pick out a Christmas tree. “Oh that dog Lila Lou we’ve got right now, well we had a little kid come out. You know how little kids are just waddling around bundled up in their clothes,” Milt started. “Lila Lou was like a year and a half at the time,” Jane said. “And you know how little kids stand with their hands in the air all bundled up. So Lila Lou grabbed the mitten and took off, and Milt and a couple of the other guys were chasing her. And of course she thought it was a game, so grown men were chasing her around the tree farm and they never did find the mitten,” Jane remembered. One year later Lila Lou brought the glove back to the deck, all dirty and messed up. “And it just so happened last year that I was telling the story to a family out front. It was a man and his little boy. As soon as I mentioned the dog and the mittens, the boy just launched his arms up in the air and his father asked, ‘Was that the dog?’ I told the story to the same people it happened to,” laughed Jane.

The Christmas season is of course the busiest time of the year for the Yakee Tree Farm. Milt doesn’t have seven big axmen named Elmer to help him like Paul Bunyan did, but he does have a guy named Ernie. Ernie Sautbine helps park the cars, near the parking sign which says “Barking Sign” in honor of the four mischievous dogs. His main man, Johnny Burger, is a big help cutting down the fresh trees. Milt and Johnny have worked together at the church for over seven years. “Whenever I need anything he’ll be here,” Milt said. Usually seven high school age kids also come out during the busiest weekends, typically the first two Saturdays of December. So have some patience, and don’t be upset if Milt runs out of trees. “We’re really not big enough of a farm to handle Fishers,” Milt explained. He hopes to carry on the tradition to his nephew who recently bought some land in Kansas. Milt plans to make the drive to his nephew’s land in the near future and help plant some smaller trees for next season. Milt summarized his future plans simply, “I have no plans to quit tree farming.”

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