The boon of a holiday while homebound
Americans have snapped up real Christmas trees
This year, with parties and vacations largely canceled, one source of holiday cheer remains intact: Christmas trees.
Americans are buying the trees in droves, and the farms that produce them are struggling to keep up. The surge in demand has been a boon for Plantations Réal Beloin, a Christmas tree farm in East Hereford, Quebec.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Thierry Beloin, vice president of the farm.
The 530-acre farm had completely sold out of trees in August and loaded up its last shipment to the United States on Dec. 3.
Plantations Réal Beloin is a family-run enterprise. Réal Beloin converted his father’s dairy farm into a Christmas tree operation in 1981.
“I’d had enough of cows!” he said.
Now Réal Beloin; his wife, Ninon Mongeau; and their sons, Thierry and Philippe, run the farm together.
It’s one of about 1,500 Christmas tree farms in Canada, a $108 million industry. About half of Canadian tree sales go across the border into the United States.
Thierry Beloin was 12 when he started helping his father shear trees. He went on to attend agriculture school and started working at the farm full time when he was 21. Now 27, he hopes to pass the farm onto his future children one day. His brother’s 2-year-old daughter, Brooke, already visits the farm once a week.
During the harvesting season, the farm cuts down about 4,000 Christmas trees each day. The farm harvests about 10 percent of its trees every year. A Christmas tree takes 12 years to grow to maturity.
Before the trees are shipped, they must be wrapped in string to make them easier to transport. Plantations Réal Beloin usually sells about 25,000 trees to vendors in the New York area alone.
The farm distributes trees in the U.S. states and three Canadian provinces, along with more far-flung locales like Dubai, United Arab Emirates and South America. The uptick in demand this year allowed the farm to increase its prices by 10 percent.
“This is the best year I’ve ever seen as a Christmas tree grower,” Thierry Beloin said. “We never had any doubt that we would be able to sell our trees.”
But the Christmas tree business, like seemingly everything else, has been disrupted by the virus.
There are fewer sidewalk stands in U.S. cities, with some vendors citing public health concerns as the reason they’re staying away, while others have noted an unmistakable spike in demand from pent-up Americans desperate for holiday cheer.
And eager buyers are being asked to dig a little deeper as some vendors raise their prices.
Across the United States, Canada and much of Europe, consumers have been snapping up trees, leading in many cases to record sales. Some people are first-time buyers, while others are buying earlier than usual, making it challenging to keep fresh trees in stock.
Tim O’Connor, executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association, said growers sold 26.2 million trees in the United States last year and that “all indications are that it will be a higher number than that” in 2020.
There’s clearly a correlation between pandemic fatigue and people heading for the nearest tree seller.
“I think people are just starving for human contact,” said Erika Lee Sengstack, owner of a New York City Christmas tree stand. “And to be able to make that connection on the street, over a tree, is truly heartwarming.”