There was a bite to the air and the frost clung hard to the windshield ”“ a day that rightly ought to be a slow one for a garden center. But the calendar dictated otherwise. With Thanksgiving”™s turkeys supplanted by this month”™s sugarplums, Patsy Crucitti & Sons Florists and Greenhouses in Old Greenwich was already bustling Black Friday even as the giblets were still digesting.
Holiday accoutrements like poinsettias, cyclamen, hand-blown Christmas tree ornaments, wreaths, garlands and potted trees awaited new owners.
“Usually we handle about 100 to 125 in the way of potted live trees ”“ Alberta spruces, blue spruces and such,” said owner Joseph Flynn, grandson of Patsy Crucitti, who started the East Putnam Avenue business in 1945. The store is on its fourth generation as son Ben Flynn and daughter Jackie Flynn work there, too.
Flynn said many of the balled trees adorn entranceways, living out their lives decoratively in flower planters before finding a hole in the yard like they were intended. “We do cut flowers, as well, but without a doubt the holiday season is a blessing for business,” Flynn said.
The potted trees run from $25 to “around $250,” depending on size.
A few miles south in Greenwich, Ignacio Ordaz is also in the Christmas tree business. And he was off to a quick start: His first tree sold at 8 a.m. Black Friday. The stand also had on hand 100 wreaths. Tree prices, Ordaz said, run “$60 to about $350.”
Ordaz will try to sell 600 trees from a parking lot on West Putnam Avenue: balsams and Douglas firs. His stand is convenient to the street”™s luxury auto retailers for anyone who wants to put a Rolls Royce under the tree for that special someone.
Keith Padin is the marketing and retail manager at Jones Family Farms in Shelton, now in its seventh generation of Jones ownership ”“ dating to 1850 ”“ owing to the tiny bib overalls of 1-year-old Samuel Jones and 4-year-old Jackson Jones.
“And there”™s Philip Jones, who just turned 90 in October, still working hard on the farm,” Padin said. “He planted the farm”™s original Christmas trees in the 1930s as a 4-H project. He grew trees for the neighbors and left a can on the front porch for payment. More than 60 years later, we have 400 acres and over 200 acres are planted with Christmas trees.”
Padin said Jones Family Farms is “definitely one of the biggest Christmas tree farms in the county.” Padin could not estimate how many trees are on the farm, but said each spring a crew plants a sapling beside every stump from the previous Christmas harvest.
The Jones farm grows six varieties of trees: Colorado blue spruce, Fraser fir, balsam fir, angel white pine, Douglas fir and white fir. In 2008, all harvest-your-own trees are $60 ($56.60 plus tax) through Dec. 14, without regard to variety or size. Starting Dec. 15, the price is $55 (including tax). Those interested in cutting their own should arrive by 4 p.m. (The farm provides saws, or you can bring your own; no chainsaws, though.)
Kathy Kogut, a Christmas tree farmer, along with husband Bill, at the state”™s largest Fraser fir farm in Tolland County ”“ 75,000 trees on 90 acres ”“ represents 288 growers as executive director of the Connecticut Christmas Tree Growers Association. She said association members manage 5,000 acres of trees statewide. She said Christmas trees alone do not pay all the bills. “They don”™t give you enough income for a livelihood,” she said, noting she and Bill also farm 100 acres in nursery stock and tobacco in Hartford County. Her plea, along with that of the state Department of Environmental Protection Forestry Division: “Please say ”˜harvested”™ instead of ”˜cut.”™ It”™s important for people to know that for every tree harvested, two to three trees are planted. When people hear ”˜cut”™ they think it”™s final.”
Farther west, when the family business is measured in centuries ”“ 1.8 to be precise ”“ tweaking the equation is no small event. But that is the story in Westchester County, N.Y., at Stuart”™s Farm in Granite Springs, where seven generations of the same family ”“ dating to when James W. Conklin first tilled the site in 1828 ”“ have worked the earth without a Christmas tree crop.
That was slated to change Thanksgiving weekend.
Seven years ago, the Stuart family dug themselves a hole and into it placed a Douglas fir seedling.
That first seedling is now ready for sale. Stuart”™s Farm”™s Christmas tree venture ”“ in the making since 2001 ”“ was scheduled to bear financial fruit the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend when the first of that crop was expected to fall to the saw. They may be an agricultural crop, just like corn, but a tree is a tree and, as owner Betsy Stuart said, “That”™s what it takes ”“ seven years.” (Jones Family Farms estimates a foot per year.)
Stuart”™s has upped its fir count by 500 per year leaving 3,000 now in the ground in stages from sapling to tinsel-ready. The field has a you-cut-it policy.
“We planted Douglas firs because the deer don”™t like them,” said Stuart, whose husband Bob Stuart is co-owner.
The cut ones add up to a January mess, wherever you are. In cross-Sound New Rochelle, N.Y., the Department of Public Works this year devoted 28 man days to collecting trees, according to Commissioner Jeffrey Coleman. The process begins in mid-January, Coleman said. “This year, we picked up our last tree in May.”
