Wintry Weather Isn’t Making Life Easy For Newtown’s Christmas Tree Farms

By Shannon Hicks

Snowstorms that rolled through the area during the last two weekends do not seem to be affecting the sales in Newtown of live Christmas trees too badly. Families who celebrate Christmas with a live tree are not going to be deterred by something as unpredictable as weather. A Christmas tree is one of the major highlights of a family’s holiday decorations. For many people there is nothing to discuss: The idea of an artificial tree in unthinkable, so weather is not going to stop them from continuing their holiday celebration.

For the seven or so Christmas tree farms in Newtown, two snowstorms in as many weekends may have weakened their sales hopes but that has not put anyone out of business.

According to The Connecticut Christmas Tree Growers Association, the average growing time is six to ten years for a tree to grow into a well-shaped six- to eight-foot tree, depending on species and other factors including soil and weather conditions. Local farmer Steve Paproski points out that different varieties can take longer to reach their marketable age. A blue spruce takes longer than a white spruce, for instance.

There are more than 100 CCTGA Christmas tree farms in Connecticut, including three member farms in Newtown –– Four Corners Farm, Longview Tree Farm, and Paproski’s Tree Farm.

The first two years of a tree’s life are spent in a nursery, when seeds are planted and then cultivated into two-year-old seedlings.

Seedlings are taken from the nursery beds and replanted in Christmas tree farms. The trees are shaped and/or pruned each year.

For each Christmas tree harvested, two to three seedlings are planted in its place the following spring.

Defying the odds, Steve Paproski said his farm actually had its best Saturday in history earlier this month. In the middle of a winter storm –– which started on Friday, December 5, and continued right into the early morning hours of Sunday, December 7 –– Paproski’s Tree Farm on Hattertown Road had its best Saturday in the farm’s 16-year history.

“That big snowstorm last Saturday, we didn’t think anybody was going to come but we had more people than anticipated,” Mr Paproski said Monday afternoon.

“The snow has affected us, but people are so happy to be out cutting their own trees. They’re having fun, they show up dressed for the weather, and they just drag the trees right through the snow. Snow adds a lot of character to cutting your own Christmas tree.”

Julia Wassermann, who sells trees in Sandy Hook, also had customers during the past few weekends, including one family that showed up at the height of last Sunday’s storm.

“This little boy jumped out of the car and announced ‘We’re going to get our tree!’ It was icy and miserable and I just looked at him and said, ‘You’re kidding,’” Mrs Wasserman said this week. “He put his hand on his hips and said, ‘Nope, we’re here for our tree,’ and off he went.”

Mrs Wasserman owns one of Newtown’s oldest tree farms. She and her husband, the late Dr Louis Wasserman, moved into Sandy Hook’s Medridge Farm in the early 1960s. They began planting trees by the end of that decade.

“Sales are definitely down for us,” said Mrs Wasserman. “I did OK last weekend. I didn’t do great, just OK, and it’s still less than in previous years.”

This is the first year after a two-year break that trees are being sold as Medridge Farm. For each of the last two years Mrs Wasserman donated 200 trees to Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company. While the Walnut Tree Hill Road farm was not officially open for sales, they did not turn away regulars if they showed up for trees.

“We weren’t officially open, but people who had been coming here for years just showed up,” said Clifford Kicher, who has worked for Mrs Wasserman since 1991. “We didn’t advertise because Julia had given so many trees to the fire department, but if people showed up we took care of them.”

Mrs Wasserman has between eight and ten acres of her 110-acre property dedicated to Christmas trees. In a good year Medridge Farm sells “many hundreds” of trees. This year Mrs Wasserman only expects to clear between 300 and 500.

“Even in a good year, this isn’t a money making business for the small farms,” she pointed out. “By the time you put in the labor to groom the trees, and pay people to take care of selling the trees, you’re lucky if you break even.”

Not that Mrs Wasserman is going to get out of the tree business any time soon. She continues to raise trees from their seedling stage. Mrs Wasserman purchases trees when they are between 8 to 12 inches tall and plants them into a seedling bed, where they stay for a few years before being replanted in the various tree fields to grow to maturity. Young trees of varying ages were seen in the seedling bed just this week, so there are a number of future crops already in the making for Medridge Farm.

Richard Recht, the owner of Longview Tree Farm on Tunnel Road, echoed Mrs Wasserman’s money views. The numbers may be down a little for his farm this year, but Mr Recht refuses to worry. Growing Christmas trees is something he does more for fun than its profitability. He and his family planted their first trees in the early 1980s and have been selling for just over a decade.

“All of the farmers I know in the Newtown and Brookfield area sell trees as a side item,” explained the man who says he loves going out in June and July to shear his trees. “It’s hot and sticky at that time of the year, but in my mind I’m in the middle of the Adirondacks, and I’m having a wonderful time.

“It isn’t a profit-loss thing that’s going to make them or break them,” he said, returning to the topic of profits. “We all have another cushion. It’s fun to grow these trees and sell them, but we don’t do this for a living.

“On the other hand, this work does make one deepen your appreciation of what it must be like to be a farmer. Between the weather and the number of weekends you have for sales, you can really get an idea of what it’s like to be a farmer for a living. Talk about stress.

 “If it isn’t fun it really isn’t worth doing. If maximizing my income were my goal I’d be much better off sitting in the house investing in bonds or stocks. That’s not why I do this. I do it because it’s enjoyable.

 “Last weekend was not a busy one because people either don’t want to come out in the weather or they don’t want to haul the trees through the snow, which a heavy job on a normal day never mind when you’re trudging through falling snow,” he continued.

“This past weekend was wonderful, well just Saturday, actually,” he continued. Sunday’s snow meant fewer people were shopping for live trees.

But Mr Recht has seen people out in the all types of weather, including rain and snow.

“When people come out in harsh weather they usually can’t come out any other time –– children’s schedules, family visiting, whatever. They’re really very hearty when they get out there. They’ll come out and it may be snowing or sleeting, but they still show up,” he said. “It may take a minute before the car doors open … because they’re in the car getting dressed for the weather, with their hats, and their parkas. Then the doors open, they’re prepared, and they’re ready to have some fun.

“We sell fresh trees and fun. The fun of walking around, picking a winner, cutting it down, making taking some photos or having them taken by the guy who owns the tree farm.”

Sam Nezveski, the owner of Sam’s Tree Farm, is hoping that the final weekend before Christmas will help his farm break even.

“I’ve had a pretty good season so far,” Mr Nezveski said this week, “but the storms have done a job on me. Many people haven’t shown up, but we’re still a few days before Christmas.

“We still have a lot of trees here, but what can you do about the weather?”

The weather is wreaking havoc on sales at Foxview Farm on Hundred Acres Road.

“Between the blizzards, high winds and ice, well you can’t really pick out a tree when it’s got a foot of snow on it,” said Kim Macey, who manages the farm for its owners. “Last year was an in-between season for us. We had a lot of young trees that weren’t ready to be sold, and now we’re getting socked with this weather. It’s too bad for this year because a lot of trees are ready to be sold now.”

Mrs Macey said the best weekend for tree sales so far this year was Thanksgiving weekend.

In a recent press release, the State Department of Agriculture said the heavy rains of earlier this year boosted crops at some tree farms throughout Connecticut, resulting in greener and healthier Douglas firs and blue spruces. The owners of one Newtown farm would disagree with that statement. Too much rain was a problem for them.

“We have weather problems every single year,” said Bill Watts, who owns Four Corners Farm on Hattertown Road with his wife Evelyn. “That’s just something you deal with.”

“Our sales are down, but not because of the weather,” Mrs Watts said. “We lost a lot of trees we had planted due to last year’s drought, and then this year was too wet –– root rot took down some others.”

Interestingly, Steve Paproski praised the rainfall. His tree farm, though situated just a few hundreds away from the Wattses, is much hillier so trees need more rain than trees on a flatter surface such as Four Corners. Mr Paproski said the needle retention of his trees –– a direct correlation to the amount of moisture a tree retains –– is much better now than what he has seen in a number of years.

The Wattses also had to contend with tree diseases this year, including Douglas Fir Needle Blight and something that attacked a number of trees in the farm’s Blue spruce crop.

“We seem to be having more problems with various tree diseases than ever before,” Mr Watts said. “I think quite a few tree farmers are having problems.

“We’ve gotten more diseases in the last few years than 10 or 15 years ago, and we aren’t sure why,” he continued, but admitted not spraying his crops may be a small part of the problem.

“We’re a small farm,” Mr Watts said. “We aren’t a big commercial grower, and I don’t like to use chemicals unless I absolutely have to. Maybe that is part of why we’re seeing more diseases than larger commercial businesses, but I don’t know that for sure.”

The National Christmas Tree Association reported in November that only seven percent of the households in the United States plan to purchase an artificial Christmas tree for the 2003 holiday season. That means a lot of families are battling the weather to buy a live Christmas tree this year.