In late August, while most Americans consider back-to-school sales and Labor Day plans, Jan Hupp deals with a staggering amount of chicken manure.

Jan is the manager at Drakes Crossing Nursery in Silverton, Oregon, which, among other things, sells 1.5 million Douglas and Noble fir seedlings each year. As a commercial nursery grower, Jan will supervise the first 18 months of the Christmas trees’ lives — their infancy, if you will — before he sells them to Christmas tree farmers.

And that 10-year process starts with chicken poop.

“It has a stench that is unfathomable,” Jan says. As the 150 trucks full of manure from chicken farms roll through the small towns of the Willamette Valley, people gag on the street.

But the tried-and-true chicken manure is the cream of the crop when it comes to fertilizing Christmas tree seedlings. The smell is worth it for the nutrients.

“I’m not a greenie-weenie,” he says, “but it’s a good, organic product.”

It's cheap — only $80 per truckload — which means Jan can buy manure at an astonishing scale. Every August, about 1,200 tons of chicken poop, which Jan describes as somewhere between Play-Doh and spaghetti sauce in texture, arrive at his nursery.

This manure soaks into the ground, then “mellows through the winter.”

In September, teams of foragers head out to the forest to search for fir cones that contain up to 500 seeds each. Some work for seed companies; others work for themselves.