‘It’s truly a spectacle’
Easton ‘Christmas Tree Capitol of Connecticut’
Connecticut officials have declared Easton as the “Christmas Tree Capitol of Connecticut.” If one wants to understand why, Jacob Conover recommends standing along Sport Hill Road one weekend in December.
“It is truly a spectacle,” Conover, who manages Silverman’s Farm, said. “It’s just caravans of Christmas trees just coming down and the whole family’s got Santa hats on. It’s fun to see.”
Located right off the Merritt Parkway and Route 25, shoppers travel to Easton from New York and New Jersey for the holiday tradition. The 27square-mile town in Fairfield County has eight farms offering the cut-your-own experiences with various species, and more businesses offer pre-cut trees.
Maple Row Farm, spanning 200 acres, has been selling Christmas trees since the 1920s. The farm attracts customers from New York City and Westchester County, Scott Edwards, the manager, said. On a good day, they will sell a few thousand trees.
“Business has been awesome (this year). Thanksgiving weekend, it was beautiful,” he said.
In 2021, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz and Connecticut Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt visited Easton to give the town a citation highlighting the local farmers and to officially recognize the town as the Christmas Tree Capitol of Connecticut.
Hurlburt and other local officials, including State Sen. Tony Hwang, Representative Anne Hughes (D-135) and Easton’s first selectman David Bindelglass, celebrated the designation
again on Dec. 6 in front of the Easton Town Hall.
The campaign to securing Easton the designation began a few years ago with Lori Cochran-Dougall, an Easton resident of 15 years and co-founder of the Easton Chamber of Commerce. Easton Garden Club helped promote the campaign by making a map of all the town’s tree farms and she received funding from Maple Row Farm and Greiser’s Coffee and Market, she said.
Dougall, who has a corporate marketing background and worked at Google, told Hearst Connecticut that the purpose the campaign is to drive attention to Easton’s local business and its agrarian roots.
Representative Hughes proposed a bill in 2019 concerning
highway signs designating the town as the Christmas Tree Capitol of Connecticut, but it died in committee. The legislation aimed to “increase tourism to Easton and celebrate Easton’s status as a farming community that provides both
the state and New York with live Christmas trees,” according to the text.
“We attract so many (shoppers) from New York because we’re right close the border and close to Westchester,” Hughes told Hearst Connecticut Media on Wednesday. “People don’t realize there’s a whole farm community in Fairfield County.”
Hughes, who grew up in Fairfield, has been cutting down her own Christmas tree at Maple Row Farm since childhood.
“My Dad was a public school teacher in Fairfield. There were seven of us. So we didn’t have a lot of extra money. But that was absolutely central to our Christmas celebration,” she said.
Apart from the marketing perspective, officials and residents also launched the “Christmas Capitol of Connecticut” campaign to show appreciation for local farmers.
Edwards said that cut-yourown Christmas trees sold at Maple Row farm are eight to 10 years years old.
“People need to understand what goes into (the Christmas trees),” he said.
“Especially now that families are multiple generations removed from agriculture. It’s good to just shed a little extra light on this,” Conover, who sells 350-400 trees a year at Silverman’s, said about the designation.
While Conover and Edwards reported a successful business year, other Christmas tree growers across the country are currently struggling with low inventory of taller trees, co-owner Lisa Angevine-Bergs, the executive director of the Connecticut Christmas Tree Growers Association based in Torrington, previously told Hearst Connecticut.
The 2016 drought and 2020 pandemic took a toll on tree stocks. Connecticut farmers faced also faced last year’s dry spell and heavy rains this year waterlogged the roots of younger trees in lower-lying areas. All those challenges have led to an estimated $5 — $10 average increase of tree prices this winter, Bergs said.
Officials at the Dec. 6 ceremony reiterated the need for preserving Connecticut farms and local food sourcing.
“Our farmers are going to be ever more critical in this era of climate change and drought and extreme weather,” Hughes said in a speech. “We need to recognize that we don’t need to go out of state and add to our carbon footprint. We can just focus on our locally-sourced products right here.”