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John Doran helped unload Christmas trees Friday, (Nov. 26).
Fundraiser in Twisp supports MV Community Center
The warm scent of Christmas cut through the icy drizzle as a crew unloaded 350 Noble firs on Saturday (Nov. 27) for the annual tree-sale fundraiser for the Methow Valley Community Center.
Larry Smith, who has coordinated the fundraiser for more than 20 years, picked up the trees near Olympia last week. The trees – from 3 to 15 feet – now fill several tents, festooned with holiday lights, in the parking lot at Hank’s Harvest Foods in Twisp.
The trees are popular even beyond the Methow. “We’re kind of the big-time act up in this area,” Smith said. Campbell’s Resort in Chelan typically orders a 15-foot tree. It took an orchestrated effort by four men to unload that towering specimen from the truck.
Because last year was a record year for Christmas tree sales – they sold out in just 10 days, said John Doran, who staffs the tents with his loyal dog – Smith picked up 40 more trees this year.
The sales make a big difference to the community center, which put the proceeds toward remodels of the kitchen and gym, Executive Director Kirsten Ostlie said. “The tree sale is structured in a way that’s just awesome,” she said.
Healthy supply
Reports of nationwide tree shortages are primarily about the artificial-tree market, which has been hit by supply-chain and delivery problems from China, according to Doug Hundley, a spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association, which represents growers of live trees.
Noble firs did take a hit from the extreme heat that gripped the Northwest in June. Days of triple-digit temperatures damaged new growth, reducing the supply of Noble firs for this season by about 10%. But there’s a healthy supply of Douglas and Nordmann firs, Hundley said.
Growers – primarily small family farms – have to predict demand far into the future, since trees aren’t ready to harvest for eight to 10 years, Hundley said. When sales dropped during the recession from 2008 to 2010, growers didn’t cut as many trees, meaning they didn’t have the space – or money – to replant. Growers and consumers are seeing some impacts from that today, Hundley said.
Prices for live trees barely increased from 1995 to 2015, but over the past five years, growers have raised prices to cover their increasing costs, which will make the industry sustainable, Hundley said. Although predicting demand for a tree – and knowing how many to cut – is very difficult, “the future of the live tree industry is good,” Hundley said.
Although live trees make up only one-quarter of the total Christmas tree market, there are still about 15,000 real-tree growers across the country, Hundley said. Most are family operations on 5 to 500 acres.
Many of those growers have reached retirement age, and some have handed the business off to the next generation. Others have passed the farm to a neighbor. In most cases, the property continues to grow Christmas trees, Hundley said.
In the past three decades, 90 million to 100 million homes in the United States have used an artificial tree for the holiday, Hundley said. Artificial trees may be more convenient, but to Hundley, they deprive a family of the shared activity of cutting or buying their own tree. About one-third of the people who use real trees cut them at choose-and-cut farms, he said.
Even rarer is the tradition still embraced by many families and friends in the Methow, who get a $5 tree permit from the U.S. Forest Service and make it an outing to track down the perfect specimen. People who cut their own tree in the national forest account for just 2% of all households, Hundley said.
Hundley hailed the environmental benefits of live trees, which sequester carbon while growing and can be chipped and used as mulch after the holiday is over.
