Christmas tree farms across Northeast Ohio are gearing up for the 2024 holiday season. Many farms where you can buy pre-cut or cut-your-own trees are expected to open for business the weekend of Thanksgiving.
However, when you go searching for that perfect tree, you may need to be a little more flexible this year, according to Valerie Graham, Executive Director of the Ohio Christmas Tree Association.
“They’ll [farms] be opening here shortly,” Graham said. “There are plenty of trees in the state of Ohio and across the country. The only thing is that it may not be the tree that you want. It might not be a Fraser fir; you may have to go with a spruce. But there are trees out there.”
Graham said that the lack of variety is an ongoing result of higher than expected sales of Christmas trees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everyone was kind of staying home, so they took their family out and they wanted a family experience with agritourism, select their new tree and that’s something that’s stuck around post-COVID at this point,” Graham said.
According to Graham, some farms may run out of trees for the current season well before Christmas.
“Some guys may be open just two weeks, because they don’t want to dip into that next year supply,” Graham said. “Growers are kind of aware of it now, seeing the popularity coming out of the farms.”
That hasn’t been an issue for Steve Wilcox, co-owner of Wilcox Farms in LaGrange in Lorain County.
“Not for us, we grow our own,” Wilcox said. “I would assume that it probably would for people that have them shipped in from somewhere else, but since we grow all of them here ourselves, that part doesn’t affect us.”
Wilcox has helped at his family farm since it began in 1963 and now runs it with his two brothers. He said he had to raise prices this year to help cover expenses.
“We’ve gone up a couple dollars because everything is going up,” Wilcox said. “It helps cover expenses, but we’ve got a good supply in trees. It’s just a little too early to tell how the season’s going to go. We don’t know until we open the day after Thanksgiving.”
While Wilcox said he has a good supply of trees this year, Graham said that could change for Christmas tree famers around Ohio due to the current drought.
“Those little seedlings may not have made it if they didn’t have a way to do irrigation,” Graham said. “With them not making it, you won’t see an impact this year, but you will six years grom now, because it takes six to eight years for our Christmas trees to grow from seedlings to the stage that they can be sold and go into a person’s home for the holiday season.”
Here's more information on where you find Ohio Christmas tree farms.