Meet the entrepreneurs behind your Christmas tree

Trevor Lord was busy coordinating shipments this week from the parking lot of a Rita’s Italian Ice in Moorestown, one of the five lots where he sells Christmas trees starting on Black Friday — an entrepreneurial tradition for the carpenter by trade.

Lord, of South Philly, and his business partner of 18 years, start lining up trees to buy wholesale in July. Sales for Trev’s Trees culminate during the holiday season from five locations, including Wynnewood, Gloucester Township, Cherry Hill, and Haddon Township.

“We buy about 8,600 trees for the year,” Lord said. “We get them from all over — Western Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Quebec. We buy from different farms, and we have a relationships with all our farmers. We pick and chose from five different trees we sell.”

But the exact farms, Lord said with a smile, he keeps secret. He ordered 1,400 trees for the Rita’s lot alone.

Fresh cut Christmas trees are harder for retailers like Lord to get this year for multiple reasons, and wholesalers say their costs have gone up dramatically because of inflation, so people can expect to pay on average $5 to $10 more for a tree this year.

As the holiday season goes into full gear, some may wonder: Where does my Christmas tree come from?

Americans bought 21 million real Christmas trees in 2021. According to a survey of 2,000 people conducted by the National Christmas Tree Association, a trade group that represents growers and sellers of real trees, the median cost of a tree was $69.50 (half cost more, half less), and the average buyer was 40 years old living in a household of more than three people.

Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the nation for the number of acres of Christmas trees grown and third for the number of farms, according to a 2017 agricultural census by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The census is conducted every five years, though the data don’t emerge for another year or so after that. In all, Pennsylvania has 1,281 farms that devote more than 30,000 acres to produce about 1 million trees that are cut annually.

Though not a top producer, New Jersey has 888 farms that grow Christmas trees across 5,288 acres, with about 86,000 trees cut.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, people purchase farm-grown trees from a variety of places, such as large big box stores like Home Depot down to local fund-raisers.

Sales of real Christmas trees, however, have declined somewhat recently, according to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service. In 2019, about 12 million trees were sold, down from a high point in 2014 when about 20 million trees sold.

JC Hill Tree Farms, a large grower in Schuylkill County, plants about 100,000 trees a year on 700 acres. The county, Hill said, produces the most Christmas trees in the state.

Hill plants Fraser, Douglas, Canaan, and firs, as well as Blue Spruce. He sells trees wholesale throughout Pennsylvania (including Philadelphia), Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C

“We do a lot in New Jersey,” Hill said on Wednesday. “In fact, we have two trucks in New Jersey right now delivering Douglas firs. We’ll have a truck in Exton, near Philly, going to a Boy Scout group.”

The most popular tree, he said, is the Fraser fir, but it’s the hardest to grow. Hill said there is a shortage of trees because so few growers are getting into the business or staying with it. Farming Christmas trees is far more labor intensive than planting crops such as wheat and corn, he said.

“I’m 63 and the average age of a grower is about 62,” Hill said. “Nobody wants to get into it because of all the hard labor.”

Tree farmers have to plant shoots by hand, wait six to 10 years for them to mature, then cut or dig them out by hand, store and then load them onto trailers. Other crops, he said, are easy to plant and harvest with a combine.

Making it even more difficult: A summer drought, combined with big rise in the cost of diesel, fertilizer, and chemicals. Hill said it costs $1,000 to fill a tractor-trailer with diesel. He is selling trees to retailers, on average, for $5 to $10 more than last year to compensate.

“We had a severe drought this summer, and for seven to eight weeks we had seven people just running around with trucks and water tanks and watering by land,” Hill said. “We lost 40,000 trees.”

Aaron Grau, executive director of the Pennsylvania Christmas Tree Growers Association, said the association get calls from many states asking how to find a Christmas tree supplier.

“Pennsylvania remains one of the top Christmas tree-producing states in the country,” Grau said, “however a lot of growers will ship wholesale to retail facilities across the state, not just the big box stores. And they’ll sell to Kiwanis clubs, churches, Boy Scout troops, garden centers, you name it.”

Grau said his office fielded a call recently from a high school wrestling coach in Ohio asking how he can find a farmer to supply trees for a fund-raisers.

“Some of the calls we got were from Texas, the Midwest, and as far south as Georgia, which is interesting because they are near the Carolinas, which are big tree producers,” he said.

Indeed, North Carolina is one of the biggest supplier of trees in the East.

Lord, who sells out of the Rita’s lot, with his partner Dom Patrizio, said he buys Fraser trees from North Carolina, but they are hard to get because demand is so high, coupled with a shortage of trees planted.

People like Frasers, he said, because they have strong branches and are good for hanging ornaments, don’t drop as many needles as some other trees, and emit a pleasant smell.

But he also buys Douglas firs from Pennsylvania and Oregon. “They have a softer needle and a more full look with the needles going all the way down,” Lord said.

Lord’s trees arrive in 53-foot trailers containing 700 to 1,000 trees. He will charge about $100 for a 6- to 7-foot Fraser, and $125 for a 7- to 8-foot one. A 6- to 7-foot Douglas goes for about $75, while larger sizes are $85 to $90.

“It’s gotten pretty big,” Lord said of his business. When the season is over, he noted, it will help pay for a much-needed surf trip.