West Salem Christmas tree farm opens for season with no shortage of trees
WEST SALEM, Wis. (WKBT) — A relatively dry spring has left many Christmas tree farms across the country with a short supply of trees.
Christmas tree farms across the country are experiencing a big Christmas tree shortage, but outside of West Salem at Pederson’s Christmas Tree Farm, they say they are loaded up and ready for a busy couple of weeks.
“We have people coming here for 20 something years now and we have people coming this weekend that we’ve seen every year. We also have new people who are always excited,” said Adam Pederson, co-owner of Pederson’s Christmas Tree Farm.
The farm planted its first tree in 1988, and it has grown into a year-round operation.
“As time’s gone on we’ve been able to migrate off of the hillside and now we’ve got trees in more accessible places too and it’s just continued to grow and as other farms ma be closing or shutting their doors we’ve seen an increase in demand and we try to do what we can to get people coming here,” Pederson said.
Dry weather last spring made a big impact on the trees.
“That May-June was really dry. I think we may have only had a quarter to half-inch of rain for about a seven- to eight-week period, which was tough just after we got the trees in the ground. This was the first year we really had to go out and water our trees on a more regular basis because usually mother nature helps us out that way and gives us some precipitation, but this year was not great that way,” said co-owner Jacob Pederson.
The Pedersons know that, if other places are short on trees, more people will be coming to them for their business.
“We don’t have an endless supply or unlimited, we don’t necessarily feel that were short, but at the same time if other places are that just drives more people here and we just have to be cautious on how many trees we do eventually sell,” Adam said.
The farm has four different types of Christmas trees: fraser, balsam, spruce and white pine.
More information is on the farm’s Facebook page, Pederson’s Christmas Tree Farm.
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