N.B. tree farms, lots looking to move more stock before Christmas Day

At Yuletide Christmas tree Farm in Upper Coverdale, N.B., growing the centrepiece of the holiday season is a 30-year tradition.

“It’s not just the tree, it’s the experience, because we have the wagon, we have the farm animals, and of course, you get to go out and it’s like a treasure hunt,” said owner Chuck Secord.

At his farm, traffic typically starts in October with New Brunswickers coming early to tag their perfect Christmas tree, and the traffic continues to grow until closer to Christmas Day.

However, for Secord, the work starts much earlier.

“We usually start planting in May, the first week of May maybe earlier depending on the weather and so once that’s done then we look at fertilizing the trees and that’s usually the last week of May to get ready for the growth and the growth is in June,” he explained.

Starting in July, he spends his mornings trimming the trees to get ready for the Christmas season and while he’s been doing it for three decades, he says he’s still learning.

“We plant about 1,000 trees, roughly about that, and most did pretty good, but we have higher losses now. We have for a few years so because of that I decided to plant some trees in October, first week of October to see if that would work better for the seedlings because they need lots of moisture,” he said.

Down the road at BGC Riverview’s annual tree lot, Lynda Carey says they’ve been open since Nov. 29 and has just 100 trees left to sell by the end of day Saturday.

“The money goes right back into the programs that the club provides and that includes the hub at the Riverview Middle School and that is our youth program that runs for kids ages 11 and up,” she said.

“We also serve breakfast in three schools. We're serving in the neighborhood of 600 kids a day.”

The hope is to raise $20,000 from their tree lot this year on top of the price they paid for their trees themselves.

Carey said opening weekend, Scotiabank matched up to $3,000 on Saturday and RBC and Brunswick Royal Realty matched up to $1,500 each on Sunday.

BGC Riverview has been holding a tree lot for about 25 years or more.

However, Carey says she’s noticed that people are being more careful and cautious about how they’re spending their money this holiday season.

"It's just been a little bit slower this year than it has been in the past. We only bought 500 trees this year and we're finding it's taking us as long now to sell 500 trees as it's taken us in the past to sell 675 to 800 trees, so it's been slow. It's been steady but it's been slow,” she said.

Adding, “I think people have sort of pulled the trigger in previous years, bought an artificial tree and know that they're done doing that. It may not be what they want but they’ve decided that’s what they have to do. When you have small children and you need to make sure that Santa’s coming then you need to make sure that you can do that and in order to do that some things got to give and I think in a lot of cases a natural Christmas tree may be one of those things.”

On Saturday, Canada’s tax break comes into effect meaning while closer to Christmas, trees at some locations could be slightly more affordable for families.

The tax break applies to natural and artificial trees as well as Hanukkah trees and bushes.

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