Christmas Trees Grow Pricier
Tickle-Me Elmo--last year’s news. Pokemon trading cards--dime-a-dozen. The must-have item in short supply this holiday season isn’t something you tuck under the tannenbaum, it’s the Christmas tree itself.
“There’s quite a shortage of trees this year,” said Cheryl Burnett of Burnett Christmas Trees, a farm in Solvang where people can cut their own trees. “There are usually several Christmas tree lots set up in this area, but they didn’t come this year because they couldn’t get any trees.”
The shortage throughout California results from the forces of nature and economics. A glut of trees and slower sales in the late 1980s and early ‘90s led growers to plant fewer trees. Poor cone crops among noble firs, the most popular Christmas tree, caused a lack of seed stock and added to the shortage.
But this year, demand for fresh trees appears to be strong. Growers and lot owners report brisk sales since the day after Thanksgiving, which is usually viewed as the beginning of the Christmas season. With fewer trees to go around, many shoppers will pay more and settle for less.
“We had people reserving their trees before Thanksgiving,” Burnett said. Her son, Travis, who worked at the Christmas tree farm while in high school and college, helped his parents buy it last year.
“It looks like a lot of people will be buying trees this year,” she said.
Californians buy about 3.5 million Christmas trees each year, according to the California Christmas Tree Assn. Of those, about 500,000 are grown in the state. The rest come from growers in Oregon and Washington.
Although the smaller supply of trees will raise prices 10% to 15% per tree, it’s good news for local growers, said Sam Minturn, executive director of the association. The group’s Web site includes a list organized by county of where to find Christmas tree farms and tree lots in California.
“The biggest shortage is noble firs, and those are the biggest seller at Christmas time,” Minturn said. “The Northwest growers just flooded the market with trees and drove the prices down, which lowered the number of trees people were planting.”
Noble firs grow slowly. It takes eight to 15 years for one of the trees to mature, depending on height, Minturn said. So despite the increased demand, supply will take three or four years to catch up.
The pine pitch canker, a lethal fungus, is wiping out the Monterey pine, a popular tree that matures in three to five years. With all seedlings under quarantine, the shiny, soft-needled trees will disappear from the market in four or five years.
In Southern California, where many growers lease acreage from landowners such as Southern California Edison, a land crunch is contributing to the tree crunch. Tree farms are being replaced by higher-income enterprises, such as trailer and RV storage lots. Peltzer Pines, an Orange County grower, has lost two of the three strips of land it leases beneath Southern California Edison’s power lines.
But the bad tidings haven’t stopped shoppers. Some have scaled back on the size of the tree they take home. Others just bear the cost.
“The Christmas tree was very important in our family,” said Bente Mirow, an artist and author from Mill Valley, Calif. A native of Denmark, she remembers the trips to the forest to choose and cut a tree as the centerpiece of the family’s Christmas celebration.
“We looked forward to that more than to opening our presents,” she said. During a Christmas visit to Denmark several years ago, her children, Juliette and Max, fell in love with the tradition. This year, the family will cut a tree in a farm in Sebastopol, Mirow said. “We’ll take the tree we fall in love with and pay whatever price is asked,” she said.
For most shoppers, tree prices will rise $7 to $10 per tree. The least expensive trees, which buyers cut themselves, cost about $3 per foot. Cut trees in lots begin at about $4 or $5 per foot and go up from there, depending on the variety.
After Christmas, cut trees continue to benefit the environment, growers say. Many find their way into chippers and become mulch. Others are sold to fisheries, where they are bundled up and dropped into lakes to create a freshwater reef that gives fingerlings a safe place to hide and grow.
And at the season’s end, when ornaments are packed away for the following year, growers plant two or three seedlings for every tree that was cut.
“It’s a good way to live,” said Jane Alto, who, with her husband, has owned Alto Tree Farm in Calaveras County for 22 years.
“We plant and weed and take care of the trees, but it’s my home too,” she said. “So to me, it’s just taking care of the yard.”
