Fewer tree growers, but buying still brisk in R.I.

TREES FOR THE FOREST: Sue Champagne, artistic director at The Farmer’s Daughter, said sales have “been going well this early season,” but added that “it’s all weather-dependent.” / PBN PHOTO/HAROLD AMBLER
TREES FOR THE FOREST: Sue Champagne, artistic director at The Farmer’s Daughter, said sales have “been going well this early season,” but added that “it’s all weather-dependent.” / PBN PHOTO/HAROLD AMBLER

Late-arriving Thanksgivings shorten the traditional retail shopping season, including for Christmas tree farms, though for many Rhode Islanders the latter are a holiday-season necessity.
“It definitely makes our season shorter and quicker,” said Sue Champagne, artistic director at The Farmer’s Daughter, a Christmas tree farm in South Kingstown. But “it has been going well, this early season. It’s all weather-dependent. … What we need is winter-feeling weather, but not storms, not rain. If you get some great 30 to 40 degree winter weather, that’s wonderful for us. … November [was] really great.”
The crop of trees made it through a less-than-ideal growing season in the last 12 months, Champagne said.
“The growing year was a little bit of a challenge later in the season with the lack of rain, and the heat that came on,” she said.
Eric Watne, president of the Rhode Island Christmas Tree Growers Association and owner of Clark’s Christmas Tree Farm in Tiverton, said the shorter calendar had one benefit: It presented one fewer weekend to work fingers to the bone for owners, who with few exceptions have day jobs off the farm.
“The weekends are exhausting,” Watne said. “We like doing it, and we like it when it’s over. … It’s a lot of heavy lifting.”
Currently there are approximately 40 members of the association, about half what he’s been told there were as recently as 15 years ago, Watne said.
“In the eight years I’ve been here, I’ve seen half a dozen farmers stop, who have gone out of business,” he said. “They got too old to take care of the crops themselves and no one else in the family wanted to. So, their land ended up getting sold or used for other purposes.”
On Aquidneck Island, Sweet Berry Farm’s co-owner, Jan Eckhart, was hopeful that the calendar wouldn’t be the ultimate determinant of his business. Eckhart pointed out that for a lot of Rhode Islanders, the fact that a Christmas tree is considered a necessity has shone through during the recession that is slowly releasing its grip on the state. “The recession did affect us, but not as much as most other retail businesses,” Eckhart said. “People buy the basic things like food and a Christmas tree first, and then they would get into the various levels of gifts after that.”
Even in a standard-length Thanksgiving to Christmas sales season, some shoppers inevitably end up buying from the Christmas tree farms on Christmas Eve, according to several sellers.
“We absolutely sell trees on Christmas Eve,” said Champagne of The Farmer’s Daughter. “There are people who wait for family to come home and they want the tradition of putting the tree up together, and so they wait to make their purchase. Then, also, life is so busy and stressful these days that people don’t always get the chance to get down here until then.”
Beating stress is one of the reasons that people go to buy their own trees, according to Jean Bento, co-owner of Pachet Tree Farm in Tiverton.
“It’s always great to be out in the country,” Bento said. “We have a lot of acreage here. We have hay rides; we have hot chocolate and cider; it’s a nice experience.”
Bento said that a typical annual sales total at Pachet Tree Farm is in the vicinity of 700 trees. Bento said that Pachet sells trees on Christmas Eve, as well, although not necessarily by design.
“We really supposedly close that day,” she said, “but that never happens, because I wouldn’t turn someone away.” •

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