Business is Booming for Louisiana Christmas Tree Farmers
By writing this article, I am breaking one of my own rules of life.
My daughters will tell you, this time of year, I operate my daily life with one rule. I do not want to even hear the word, "Christmas" until the day after Thanksgiving. I've been that way ever since I can remember, with my personal tradition most likely starting the year I stopped receiving Christmas gifts. I cannot stand seeing Christmas lights or decorations that go up before Thanksgiving. I'm not a Scrooge or anything like that, in fact, Christmas is my favorite Holiday. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday, and it's an incredibly close second.
Having said all of that, I am about to break my own personal rule of life. We're about to talk about Christmas trees. After stumbling across some good news today, I felt the need to break my rule in order to help spread the word.
Simply put, unless you're planning on going the Charlie Brown route when it comes to your tree this year, you might want to get out early to pick out this year's Christmas tree.
One year removed from a COVID-19 Christmas, we are all eagerly awaiting a return to a relatively normal holiday season. Clearly, that sentiment resonates across the state because our Christmas tree farmers are already seeing business begin to boom. Kevin Steele of Steele’s Christmas Tree Farm in Washington Parish says, "Just my phone blowing up basically from almost daylight to dark, that’s no exaggeration, people wanting to know when we’re open and what type of trees are available.”
Unfortunately, there is some downside to this year's high demand. Due to Mother Nature, certain trees may be hard to come by or even find altogether. Kay Gersch of Yawn Station Christmas Tree Farm in Livingston Parish says, "We are not able to get anything larger than like eight-foot this year, we usually get 100 eight to nine-foot, but we got 21 trees that were over eight-foot.”
Don't wait to pick out your family's Christmas tree this year, if you do, you might be out of luck.