Christmas tree shortage looms

MILLBROOK —  Manhattan architect Richard Phillips owned 25 acres of land in Dutchess County and his sister, who was a Master Gardener in New Jersey, thought he should find something to grow.

He liked gardening — green thumbs grew in his family — so evidently the logical thing was for him and his wife, Wendy, to start a Christmas tree farm. In 1989, they started planting trees, and in 2001 they opened their farm for business, usually on three or four weekends per year. Thus was born Evergreen Christmas Tree Farm.

The couple lived in Manhattan, coming up to the Evergreen Farm on the weekends until the COVID-19 pandemic, then they moved here full-time. On a busy Saturday recently, they reminisced about the families who were coming to buy trees. “Some of them have been coming for years,” Richard Phillips said. “We’ve watched their children grow up,” Wendy Phillips added.

The process is simple: A customer walks through the farm and pick their tree, which is cut down by a worker with a buzz saw who then carries it to the road on a tractor. Then another worker stuffs the tree, trunk-first, into a machine that enfolds it in netting. The customer then goes to the barn to pay, where there are also wreaths for sale, and bags in which to dispose of the tree once finished with it. If there’s a child, they’re given a candy cane. Then the tree is brought to the customer’s car, tied on the roof in most cases, and taken home to decorate.

Growing the tree is not that simple, nor is the entire prospect of getting it into a house for Christmas. There are many factors that can prevent this; some are natural, some are the results of humanity’s ongoing battles to survive. Some years there are fewer trees for sale than needed. 

This year, Evergreen Farm will only be open for two weekends: It was open Thanksgiving weekend and will also be open Saturday, Dec. 2, and Sunday, Dec. 3, after which it will close for another year. Some of the other farms will not open until December, and will only be open for two weekends as well. This is because there is a shortage of trees again this year. The reason for the shortage goes back much further.

Said Phillips: “During the recession, around 2009, 2010, no one was buying trees, so we didn’t plant a lot. Then when COVID hit, everyone was buying trees.” Many people moved from the city to places like Dutchess County, which felt safer. People who lived up here part-time came and stayed, and the people who usually came only on weekends spent the holidays here. All of a sudden, there weren’t enough trees.

Another thing that COVID did was to bring families closer together, in some cases, so if you couldn’t party, didn’t want to go see the Christmas Show at Rockefeller Center, or that famous tree, a safer way to celebrate the holiday was to go to a farm and pick your own tree as a family.

Trees don’t grow over night. It takes eight years or more for a tree to mature. So, the recession that caused people to stop planting trees they thought they’d never sell was basically why there were fewer trees for sale when COVID hit and everyone bought trees. Now the stock is rather slim, and trees planted since COVID are still quite small.

There are other reasons for shortages: drought, and also root aphids that suck the sap out of the roots, causing the tree to discolor, stop growing, and eventually die. There are other pests, and fungi, as well. Trees grown close together and pass things on.

If trees seem expensive, well. They are. But trees need a lot of upkeep, which means fertilizers, sprays, water, machinery, mowing and pruning, which all comes after the initial planting, and none of it comes cheap, including labor if you can’t do it all on your own. At Evergreen there was also the machine that packs the tree plus the gas for the tractors. It all adds up. Then figure into that, when you plant a tree, you have to wait between eight and 10 years for it to mature. In the meantime, anything can happen to it.

From left, Wendy and Richard Phillips, owners of Evergreen Christmas Tree Farm in Millbrook. Photo by Judith O’Hara Balfe