Americans will buy at least 25 million fresh-cut Christmas trees this year, but the best one of them—the pinnacle in pine perfection—is the 8-foot Fraser fir from Laurel Springs, North Carolina, that sold for $145 at about 12:30 p.m. Nov. 30 on a church lawn in Lakeland, Florida.
“It has to be fat—no gaps at the top or the bottom,” Mason said, rejecting one tree after another.
“It has to be skinny and have no gaps anywhere,” Jackson said, tugging gently on branches to assess tree needle quality.
Following her sons in the shifting sun-speckled shade of live oaks, Amy Hayes could only wait until the experts agreed on what tree would exude Christmas cheer through their living room windows for all the world to see.
When they found it—a “fat and skinny” fir without gaps but with tenaciously anchored needles—they agreed it was “The One.”
At $145, it’s expensive, Amy Hayes said, but The One is worth it.
“We’ve been coming here for five, six years,” she said, noting that she believes Booger Mountain’s trees are of a higher quality than those sold in parking lots by Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and grocery chains.
Booger’s trees last longer and smell better, Amy Hayes said.
“And I like to support local small business when I can,” she said.
NCTA spokesperson Jill Sidebottom said 2024 is shaping up “like a pretty normal season” with a healthy tree crop ready for trimming.
“The 2024 harvest across the country, in different places ... there are issues,” she told The Epoch Times. “It was very wet in the spring, and it was a dry summer in the Northeast. That affected [trees] in Pennsylvania and Maine. In North Carolina, we had this storm and a lot of young trees died. But for the most part, the taller trees were not damaged.”
North Carolina is second only to Oregon in Christmas tree production, followed by Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington, according to the NCTA.
NCTA, which represents about 15,000 tree farms, 38 state and regional associations, and more than 4,000 businesses, selected a North Carolina Fraser fir from a farm damaged by Hurricane Helene as the “national tree” for the White House, according to Sidebottom.
“The great news is [North Carolina] trees came through, in most cases, in really great shape,” Marsha Gray, executive director of the Real Christmas Tree Board, told The Epoch Times.
“Several farms in low-lying areas did receive a lot of damage.
“The majority are grown on the sides of mountains, so the water was below them.”
She added that growers had some concerns with infrastructure but that roads and railways recovered rapidly.
“They gave us a very positive response,” Gray said, noting that these growers sell two-thirds of Christmas trees bought across the United States. “The quality was good, no concerns with shipping, and 60 percent said they did not plan to raise wholesale prices this year.
“We are ready, and we are excited.”
Industry in Transition
The biggest issue with the 2024 holiday season is the calendar, Sidebottom said.“The oddest thing about this season is Thanksgiving is so late this year,“ she said. ”A lot more places opened the weekend before Thanksgiving.”
The future of the industry faces potential disruption from tariffs if President-elect Donald Trump follows through with proposed levies on imported goods, including from Canada, which produces nearly 30 percent of Christmas trees sold in the United States, and from the same corporate pressures that are driving independents and family-run farms out of the agriculture industry.
Sidebottom said she has “no idea” how tariffs could affect tree prices next year.
“We have a group from Canada that is part of our association and are represented on the [USDA] board,“ she said. ”They’ve been shipping trees since the 1950s.”
Gray said the board is not allowed to comment on public policy but noted that Trump’s tariffs are on growers’ minds.
“We’re all going to watch and see what happens,” she said.
“We fully support President Trump’s proposal to shift toward a tariff-based economic system, which we believe will be transformative for the Christmas tree industry and countless other sectors,” he told The Epoch Times.
For years, Malanga said, Canadian imports have benefitted from the weaker Canadian dollar, allowing them to undercut U.S.-grown trees in price.
“A tariff on imported Christmas trees would help level the playing field, redirecting demand toward American growers and empowering local farms and businesses,” he said.
Cedar Grove Christmas Trees has longstanding relationships with growers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, who have “faced some of their toughest years recently,” and they would benefit from Trump’s tariffs, Malanga predicted.
It will likely take more than tariffs for independent, family-owned growers to survive in a market increasingly dominated by corporations.
Fewer nonprofits, such as Optimist clubs, church groups, Scouts, and youth sports teams, are selling trees, providing less opportunity for entrepreneurs to side-hustle Christmas cash.
“That’s a trend within the industry. The way we retail today is very different from what you would have seen 20, 30 years ago,” Gray said.
Growers are still servicing nonprofits, community organizations, and entrepreneurs, but they are now less than one-third of the market.
Sidebottom said that among things that customers miss about the vacant lot tree-seller is “haggling over that ‘Charlie Brown’ tree” that nobody wants.
She said the corporate takeover of the Christmas tree market has growers adjusting as well.
As the 2023 Real Christmas Tree Board survey revealed, up to 25 percent of consumers buy trees at “choose-and-cut” farms that allow them to peruse fields to pick the tree they want.
On Booger Mountain
Booger Mountain manager Kris Sherrouse said big-box retailers “are buying out the farms.” With fewer mom-and-pops in the business, he said, that ultimately means a winnowing of choice and quality—and eventually, higher prices.It’s an issue across all agricultural commodities, not just Christmas trees, Sherrouse said, noting that his family has been in the cattle ranching business in central Florida since the late 1800s.
“There’s a little bit [of a] difference between trees and cattle, but it’s still agriculture-involved,” he said.
Sherrouse was working with Booger Mountain for years before taking over the enterprise about 15 years ago. Established in 1981, it has a decades-old relationship with one farmer in Laurel Springs, North Carolina, that sells only to them.
He said he has no plans to do anything differently. The business’s model—high-quality products, good service, competitive prices—works, Sherrouse said.
“We didn’t raise our prices at all this year,” he said.
Booger Mountain has trees ranging from 3 feet to 8 feet—although some are as tall as 30 feet—ranging in price from $40 to $300. Its five workers will “first-cut” a tree so it’s ready to be watered, mount it on a stand, wrap it in a mesh, and lash it to roofs for transport.
The trees sold on Nov. 30 were cut on farms on Nov. 25, shipped from farms on Nov. 26, and arrived at Booger Mountain on Nov. 27, he said. Booger Mountain didn’t open until the day after Thanksgiving and rarely operates for more than two weeks.
Last year, Booger Mountain sold two “full semi loads” before closing on Dec. 11. Sherrouse said it’s “a good possibility” that he’ll order a second shipment, a decision that he must make soon because the trees are currently in the ground.
Fussy yule arborists seeking the perfect Christmas tree—the best one on the planet, the greatest one of all time, The One—will find it at Booger Mountain, he guarantees, because he said he sees it every day.
“I like to watch the families and the kids,” Sherrouse said. “It makes me feel good to see them really enjoying Christmas.”
