Live trees bring Christmas home
It's the centerpiece that heralds the holiday season in most houses, but it starts out as a sapling about a dozen years before going home with its owner to be decorated.
Whether a family decides on a real tree for the coniferous aroma, tradition, a trip to the country or to support a local business, the result has been several Christmas tree farms in the area hopping with business lately.
Tom Goldscheitter of Goldscheitter Christmas Tree farm in Buffalo Township sells around 400 Christmas trees per season from his four-acre field. He has been at it for about 30 years.
“I'm selling the same amount as I have in past years,” Goldscheitter said, “it's just that it seems people are coming earlier for their tree.”
Traditionally, he said, the second week after Thanksgiving was his busiest time. But in the past two years, Thanksgiving weekend sees his small farm swarmed with chilly locals armed with hacksaws or staring down pre-cut pines.
“Everyone wants the good tree,” Goldscheitter supposed of the reason for the earlier turnout.
He is currently sold out, which may confuse those who spy some good-sized trees in his field.
“I make an allotment of how many trees I can sell based on the size and how many I need to leave for next year,” Goldscheitter said. “Once I sell that number, I shut the field off.”
He said while 6-foot trees were the norm for many years, folks are now searching for seven- or eight-foot models.
Success in growing pine trees typically used at Christmas is up to the whim of Mother Nature.
Goldscheitter said unusually high rainfall amounts in the summers of 2018 and 2019 rotted the tender roots of many of the saplings he planted.
The lack of rainfall this year killed trees as well, he said.
“We went from one extreme to another,” Goldscheitter said. “I had to replant 1,000 trees in the last couple years to replace ones that died.”
Like many farms, Goldscheitter has a shaker to remove dead needles or debris from trees that parents have cut down and dragged across his field, and a baler wraps the tree in twine for a more aerodynamic trip home on a vehicle roof or in a truck bed.
Due to the pandemic, he set up four stations where customers can get a squirt of hand sanitizer.The practice of offering patrons and their children a cookie baked by his wife has changed in the pandemic.“People used to choose their own cookie, but this year she had to individually wrap each cookie and hand it to somebody behind a piece of Plexiglas,” Goldscheitter said.Growing businessA third-generation, multipurpose farm that is famous for its Christmas trees is Lake Forest Gardens, which is four miles west of Zelienople in Beaver County.Owner Kevin Dambach said while the farm was purchased by his grandfather in 1939, the family has been selling Christmas trees since the mid-1950s.Dambach plants about 20,000 trees on 300 acres each year using a tree-planting machine.Like most farms, he also supplements his stock by buying pre-cut trees. He sells about 1,000 trees per year.Dambach has continued his tradition of opening on the day after Thanksgiving. He has encouraged people on Facebook and his website to come select a tree during the week to avoid crowds of people during the pandemic.“That did work out,” Dambach said, “and then we're not as busy on the weekends.”He agreed that weather plays a crucial role in the success of a Christmas tree farm.“I've had a lot of issues this summer from previous years being too wet,” he said.This year's dry, hot summer presented its own set of obstacles, Dambach said.“That was very detrimental to the business,” he said. “Christmas trees do not like consecutive days in the high 80s and low 90s.”Dambach anticipates supplying Christmas trees to families of the future, as his son, Jason, is the fourth generation to become involved in the farm.Pandemic pick-me-upRandy Cypher of Cypher's Tree Farm in Butler Township is also a third-generation Christmas tree farmer. He plants 2,500 pine saplings per year.
His grandfather charged $2 per Christmas tree in the early 1960s when he began selling them. Trees now cost an average of $10 per foot.Cypher sells about 1,200 to 1,500 Christmas trees per year from his 45 acres of fields. He also sells pre-cut trees he purchases from a third party. As of Thursday, he had about 100 pre-cut trees left.“Our trees are guaranteed COVID-free,” Cypher said with a chuckle.He said some customers have mentioned that they are buying a real tree this year as a pick-me-up during the pandemic.“It takes your mind off of all the ugly stuff going on, so it's a nice change,” Cypher said.'One tree apart'Ken Dambaugh, owner of Pine Hill Farms in Connoquenessing Township, is another third-generation farmer who sells Christmas trees each year.Dambaugh said his son and nephew are also involved in the business, which he hopes will allow the 1945 farm to continue its holiday tree sales well into the future.He said between the customers fighting the drear of the pandemic and the closing of a few large tree farms in Allegheny County, his business is up 10% to 20% this year.The 500 to 600 trees Dambaugh sells each Christmas are both homegrown and pre-cut trees purchased from a farm in Crawford County.Customers can take a socially distanced hay ride through the field to find and cut their perfect tree, and workers will help customers fell their tree if needed.Signs at Pine Hill Farms remind customers to remain “one tree apart” while shopping, and the office where patrons traditionally paid for their trees has been swapped for a window.“I think it has made it better for our office staff and the customers,” Dambaugh said.In addition to weather issues, Dambaugh said Rudolph's relatives have also affected his Christmas tree crop.He said deer not only eat Fraser firs, but rub their itchy antlers on the trees.“We lost over 100 small trees this year over antler rubbing,” Dambaugh said.Making a traditionNathan Fuhrman-Renwick of Center Township tagged a tree at Cypher's Tree Farm ahead of time and bundled up his wife and two young children to go cut it down last weekend.“My son Llewyn, he's 3 now, he helped me cut it down and drag it,” Fuhrman-Renwick said.Both he and his wife remember trips to the tree farm as children to cut down a tree, and wanted to replicate the memory with their own children.“I like getting the tree,” Fuhrman-Renwick said. “It's fun.”Christina Raabe-Eck of Butler Township had an artificial tree until her daughter, Cassidy, was born 17 years ago.Raabe-Eck and her husband decided to take their baby to the tree farm and buy a blue spruce for Christmas.“You start a family and you start some traditions,” she said.Their family chooses a precut tree and opts for a blue spruce because of its strong aroma and needles.They normally get a tree that is about seven feet high.“Tall and skinny, that's us,” Raabe-Eck said.She recalls one Christmas when a very young Cassidy and her cousin were told it was time to trim the tree and were left alone with the spruce for a few moments while the adults went to retrieve ornaments and lights.Upon returning to the living room, the Ecks discovered the tots had found a pair of scissors and cut off all the branches they could manage.“They hear the expression 'trim the tree' and we went in and saw branches and needles everywhere,” Raabe-Eck recalled.She said the family decided to keep the modified tree, and decorated it while in hysterics over the kids' antics.“It was the best tree ever,” Raabe-Eck said.
