Christmas Tree Harvest

While the rest of us were busy fixing Thanksgiving goodies last week, Christmas tree producers were burning the midnight oil to fill wholesale orders, and Choose and Cut growers were preparing their farms to be ready for the public by November 23rd. Chris Aldrich, wholesale Christmas tree grower and owner of Natives Northwest Company located in Lewis County Washington, talks about how harvest is going for him this year.

ALDRICH: Harvest is going real well, and the weather has been fairly cooperative, you know, no freezing and snowing and crazy stuff like that.

A surplus of Christmas trees due to a planting boom several years back resulted in growers having to charge low prices for high quality trees over the last few seasons. As for this year, Aldrich says sales have been fairly good.

ALDRICH: Sales for me this year have been okay. They’re not super great, but I think they’ll improve in the next couple of years. Prices - I think what I’m seeing in the industry is the light at the end of the tunnel a lot nearer in terms of the oversupply, overstock inventory. I really think we’ll come out of it here in the next couple of years with both a stronger demand for real trees and maybe a slightly shorter supply of some sizes and maybe that will help the wholesale price firm up a little bit, not be so soft.

Tomorrow we’ll talk with Aldrich about the controversial Christmas tree checkoff program and how he and several other Christmas tree growers remain hopeful that the checkoff program yet has a chance of being reinstated.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.