DEBLOIS – James “Weasel” Perry isn’t bothered by wind in the face, cold fingers, pine branches heavy with snow or early darkness. The longer he works cutting brush for wreaths, the more money he makes.

A sophomore student at Cherryfield Christian Academy, Perry lives for the weeks between Halloween and early December when he can join his stepfather in the woods for the seasonal work. Once their pickup truck brims with boughs, the two emerge from logging roads above Route 9 and head for home and the buyers.

Like hundreds of other Down Easters at this time of year, they do the dirty work that goes into the tens of thousands of graceful wreaths that Washington County supplies to the rest of the country at the holidays.

“It’s fun, and you make good money at the same time,” Perry said Monday with a grin. On a good day, the enterprising 15-year-old said, he can pocket $100 or more.

Perry and his family live two miles off Route 193, back where the woods and the blueberry barrens meet.

“Tipping” – or cutting tips – is an annual rite of late autumn for Stanley “Junior” McLain, Perry’s stepfather, and Debbie McLain, who makes wreaths on her kitchen table from the greenery her husband and son bring home.

“It’s just what you do down here in Washington County,” said David Fraser of Harrington, who buys wreaths from the McLains and 60 other wreath makers in the area working from their homes.

“You do it between clamming, lobstering and blueberrying. You do fairly decent if you do a good job. It’s just part of living here,” he said.

Few engaged in tipping and wreath making are new to the work. Families grow up with the seasonal tradition. Both of the McLains, who both are 38, remember being initiated in tipping and wreath making as 8-year-olds.

Debbie McLain grew up in Franklin, and her mother taught her to wrap the tips with wire around the 12-inch rings. Junior McLain grew up in Steuben, where his mother, Delcina McLain, continues to make wreaths on her own.

Thirty years later, Debbie McLain’s fingers are nimble as ever. She tapes her fingers daily so the wires don’t leave her with cuts. Standing all day for comfort, she makes about two dozen wreaths a day. Her husband delivers them to Fraser’s Downeast Wreath Co., 12 dozen at a time.

The scent of balsam fir fills the kitchen.

“I love this time of year,” she said. “I love how the house smells.”

She would make wreaths year-round if she could, but it’s a short season. For four or five weeks, the kitchen table and floor overflow with brush. For evenings on end, the family’s supper is eaten from plates balanced on knees in the living room.

Everybody understands the daybreak-to-darkness frenzy.

McLain earns $32 for every dozen wreaths she turns over. Others who sell to other wreath companies earn $36, or even $55, for a dozen, she said.

“I’m OK with getting $32, because I get to stay home,” McLain said, “but you have to be willing to do the work. If you’re lazy, forget it.”

Obtaining the greens involves scanning the lower parts of trees for healthy boughs, then reaching in and snapping off the tips. Handfuls turn into poles of brush, all tied together, that can weigh 90 or 100 pounds.

The going price for the greens is 35 cents a pound. The pay at the season’s start was 30 cents, then 32 cents, and lately 35 cents, now that the snow makes the work more difficult. An average day’s haul can be between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds.

Junior McLain said it’s the best price he has ever been paid, snow or not.

The higher price just means that everything else has gone up, too – the cost of gasoline, the cost of the wreaths, even the cost of the rings and wires.

Tipping isn’t just about going into the woods and taking what you want. Written permission is required from landowners. Some don’t ask for anything in return for the courtesy of being asked.

But that’s not the case for the county’s two largest forested landowners. Wagner Forest Management wants $80 for its permits, which allow tippers to go anywhere on Wagner property. International Paper works on a bid system, allowing the highest-bidding tippers to work an area.

When rangers from the Maine Forest Service appear, tippers are expected to show their permits or documents. Rangers verify by radio that permission has been granted, and that the note isn’t merely forged.

So far this season, rangers have issued eight summonses for tipping violations. As many as 20 or 30 violations are recorded in a typical season Down East, said Jeff Currier, the Maine Forest Service supervisor for southern Washington County and Hancock County.

“We still have a ways to go, and our violations will go up as December comes,” he said.

Still, ’tis the season for tipping, and hundreds of Washington County families live for it.

Sometimes Debbie McLain thinks about all the fancy homes in Connecticut and New York that ultimately get the wreaths – plus a little dose of Down East.