Christmas tree farms see increased demand, despite inflation and supply shortages

Drought conditions, inflation and high demand have affected Christmas tree sales in the Spokane area this year, according to a handful of sellers who recently spoke with The Spokesman-Review.

But the problems may not necessarily be problems for those who want a fresh cut conifer to hang lights and ornaments on this Christmas.

Despite the mild sticker shock, demand for Christmas trees has only grown over the last few years, according to Jim Dietz, who runs Dietz Christmas Tree Farm in the small farming community of Green Bluff. Dietz, primarily sells U-Cut trees, which provides customers the experience of cutting the tree themselves.

“It seems like there’s more demand for trees since COVID happened,” said Dietz, 60, who has plans to retire after selling Christmas trees for the past 42 years. “Pricing has gone up due to everything going up. That’s the cost of doing business. Farmers have to buy fuel and maintenance – all that stuff has gone up.”

The last several years of extreme heat in the Inland Northwest has also hurt tree farms, Dietz said.

“The drought has actually caused me to decide to give up on my farming. We had three years of really hot weather and a lot of farms lost the seedlings they planted,” he said. “It takes eight to 10 years to grow a tree to harvest, so now I’m behind like eight years because of the drought we’ve had these last few years. It was just part of the decision to downsize and eventually retire.”

The drought has also been tough on the tree farm at Wildland Cooperative, also located in Green Bluff. The relatively new cooperative venture has considered establishing some irrigation to help with the drought in the area, according to Michael Townshend, a worker owner at Wildland.

“The hot summers are just not good for establishing young Christmas trees. They need water in that first year or two and unfortunately it’s not the most easy or cost effective thing to irrigate trees,” he said. “It’s historically never needed it up here, but these summers have been so dry and hot it’s kind of wreaking havoc on our operation.”

Like Dietz, Tonshend said Wildland has also increased prices to about $100, whereas last year they were $80.

Some trees were more negatively affected than others, according to Judy Ritz-Dalnes, who sells potted Christmas trees from Judy’s Enchanted Garden, located at 2628 W. Northwest Blvd. Many of the grand firs that Judy’s typically sells were “fried” from previous summers, said Ritz-Dalnes, now in her 19th year of selling Christmas trees.

This year she also raised the price of her most popular trees, the 6-7 footers, to $100, she said. She paid $10 extra for the trees, but she only raised prices by $5

“We just want to make sure people can afford them and we sell out,” she said. “If we’re stuck with a bunch of trees that takes away from our profit and we don’t want to sticker shock anybody.”

Judy’s Enchanted Garden, which is still selling trees through the weekend, typically has maintained a pretty consistent amount of Christmas trees to sell over the past few years. She started with about 400 trees and still has about 100 remaining, she said.

She has seen the local supply of Christmas trees dwindle over the last several years.

“We’ve been lucky,” she said. “There are less people growing trees and there are less lots in shopping mall corners than there used to be. It’s not an easy job to handle all these trees and load them.”

Jessie Laughery, director of community engagement and stewardship at the Hutton Settlement Children’s Home, agreed.

“The supply for Christmas trees is just not there right now,” she said.

For the past 15 years, the children staying at the Hutton Settlement learn valuable customer service and business skills, as well as tree care, by selling the Christmas trees to customers, Laughery said.

The Hutton Settlement was completely sold out of their approximately 1,200 U-Cut and pre-cut trees by last week, she said.

“We used to be able to go for three weeks,” she said. “We’re selling more than ever.”

Townshend, at Wildland Cooperative, said his farm began asking customers to schedule U-Cut reservations during COVID to help manage the flow of customers on his 13-person crew. The farm has continued the reservations this year for the approximately 500 trees left on the farm.

“The reservation system has allowed us to spread it out a bit over the season and to let the customers enjoy the experience without so many crowds,” he said.

While major retailers like Costco “can basically give them away,” Townshend said that customers at Wildland get more than a tree. They can get cider and cocoa, they can browse the farm’s new winter market and get their photo taken too, he said.

“We’re offering an experience,” he said.