Did you delay getting your Christmas tree? Why you might be out of luck in Centre County
Joyce Kreuter began her annual hunt for a live Christmas tree Tuesday.
She departed her Ferguson Township home and started her excursion at Kuhns Tree Farm to no avail. The family-owned Boalsburg business closed Saturday after selling out of its 2020 inventory.
Her next stop was Tait Farm, less than a mile away. It was the same story. The tree farm closed Monday after selling all of its available trees.
Ditto for Tannenbaum Farms and Meyer Dairy. After striking out four times, she eventually found her “small, modest” tree at Harner Farm.
“We were surprised,” Kreuter said. “But we wanted to get one in light of the season.”
Kreuter’s experience isn’t exclusive to Centre County or Pennsylvania, the fourth-largest Christmas tree producing state in the nation. Customers nationwide are facing a tight supply of live trees.
It’s a combination of “the blues and cabin fever,” National Christmas Tree Association spokesperson Doug Hundley said. More people seem to be cutting trees and decorating earlier than usual to maximize their Christmas experience.
“Shopping for a Christmas tree and starting to decorate for Christmas is a good feeling that people have always used for the middle of winter blues,” Hundley said. “It’s not surprising.”
But it is uncommon.
The 13-acre plot at Tait Farm has opened by at least the week of Thanksgiving every year since 1960 and remained open for the next month. It had never closed before Christmas Eve until this year, co-manager Emily Zink said.
Kuhns Tree Farm, which has sold Christmas trees at its 30-acre plot every year since 1987, had never closed before Dec. 23, manager Doug Banker said.
“I’ve never had sales like I did that Black Friday weekend. I sold all my garland in the first three days,” Banker said. “A lot of people are wiped out.”
The issue is exacerbated by the lengthy and intricate growing process. Trees often take upward of eight years to mature before they’re ready to be harvested, meaning this year’s supply was planted in 2012.
And there were challenges along the way, including conversations with customers who see trees in the ground but are told none are ready yet.
Tait Farm lost “a bunch” of trees, Zink said, to root rot in 2018, the wettest year on record.
“This is a seven-to-eight year investment that we put into each and every Christmas tree. It’s a lot of effort, a lot of labor to maintain them and prune them and shear them and all the things that are involved with keeping something alive for eight years,” Zink said. “People think $100 for a Christmas tree is too much, but they’d be more than willing to spend $100 to go out to eat for one evening. We’re investing seven-to-eight years into this product.”
Tannenbaum sold about 80% of this year’s trees within the first two weeks of opening and “just kept rolling because of the need,” co-owner Martha Weidensaul said. The 140-acre farm that has been operating since 1970 “sold next year’s crop totally.”
Weidensaul, 77, and her husband Craig Weidensaul, 81, were hesitant to sell next year’s trees, but did so knowing they’re approaching retirement. The couple plans to retire in 2023, Martha said.
“We believe in Christmas trees,” Weidensaul said. “But we just can’t do them our whole life.”