Published: 12/9/2021 7:56:43 PM
Modified: 12/9/2021 7:56:17 PM
NORTHAMPTON — Christmas tree shoppers have been greeted with rising prices and a limited supply as they browse trees to cut and precuts this holiday season.
David Radebaugh has been running Radebaugh Christmas Tree Farms in Belchertown for more than 50 years. Like many other tree vendors in the Valley, Radebaugh grows his own supply instead of buying from wholesalers.
“I used to buy wholesale but the quality has really gone downhill,” he said.
Roxie Pin, who co-owns Huntington’s Rockhouse Ridge Farm with her husband, said some precuts coming from as far away as Canada have “been cut before Halloween,” which makes for a poor product come December.
Radebaugh estimated the industry had a 20% increase in sales last year, which gave him the opportunity to expand his customer base. However, he said higher sales came hand in hand with the risk of overselling, meaning farms generally have fewer trees to sell this year.
“It’ll be at least two or three years before local farms catch up on their supply,” he said.
Radebaugh predicted that he will have to “close the doors” early this year to save enough trees for next Christmas.
“A driving factor of the shortage,” he said, was an increased number of families looking for something to do with their children last year during the pandemic.
David Morin, a former president of the Massachusetts Christmas Tree Association, shared this sentiment.
“It’s a family experience,” he said, adding that if parents want an outdoor excursion with their children, “this just happens to fit the bill.”
Due to overselling last year and supply chain problems, “there has been a shortage from wholesalers,” Morin said. The result, he explained, is a lack of trees in retail lots, which drives customers toward choose-and-cut tree farms such as his own, Arrowhead Acres in Uxbridge.
“Last year we almost doubled our business,” he said.
This year, Morin raised his price from $70 to $75 to accommodate the increasing costs of business that are “hitting (the industry) from every direction,” he said.
He said the rising price of gasoline is one cost that makes mowing and trimming his property significantly more expensive this year, as has the increase in the minimum wage.
Radebaugh also spoke of the pressure to raise prices this season. “Everything costs more so I had to raise prices between 2 and 5%,” he said. This increase, he said, is “just enough to make me break even.”
However, the prices don’t seem to be turning away customers. Morin said his sales are up another 45% from last year’s numbers.
Another contributing factor to the current shortage, he suggested, could simply be that “rumors about shortages of trees caused tree-buying to happen early this year.”
This means that farms are “selling out” earlier than usual. As of Dec. 3, Radebaugh predicted that he’d have to close within a week.
Bob Schrader of Chestnut Mountain Christmas Tree Farm in Hatfield said “most places are closed already” to avoid overselling.
Schrader offered one more possible explanation for this season’s shortage. Since many trees take “12 to 13 years to go from seed to tree,” he said, a smaller volume of trees planted during the Great Recession of 2008 is now causing a shortage that’s been moving toward us in slow motion for over a decade.
Regardless of tree shortages, Radebaugh said, “Christmas tree farms always do good early in the season.”
