There's good news and bad news when it comes to the local Christmas tree supply this year. The good news - Georgia tree farms have a good tree crop for the season.The bad news - cut fir trees from North Carolina are in short supply, and so are artificial trees.
Matt Beverly, the owner of Beverly's Ace Hardware in Gainesville, opened his store in the middle of the COVID pandemic, so his first Christmas in business presented some unique challenges. This year, the challenge is in the form of product supply. Some of his best-selling gift items, such as Yeti products, are in short supply, and so are artificial Christmas trees.
Beverly said he placed orders in plenty of time, but he hasn't received them yet.
"We don't have much at all," Beverly said. "I mean, we have some left over from last year, but we don't have a lot of new stuff coming in."
Beverly said he's had assurances that his tree orders will arrive in a couple of weeks, but if they don't, he'll cancel them, since the window for tree sales will be closed by that point.
Still, he and his staff have created a Christmas shop in the store, and they will sell what they do have.
"We do the Hallmark Keepsakes, so we've got lots of Hallmark ornaments and other ornaments, too, and other miscellaneous Christmas items, but the lights and the trees are going to be tough to get this year," Beverly said.
North Hall Earthworks is a landscape service and supply company on Cleveland Highway, but since opening more than a decade ago, the company's November and December business had been bolstered by Christmas trees sales.
Owner Niles Corey said this year, he won't be able to offer trees to his customers because the North Carolina farm where he buys fir trees will only be able to supply about a third of the order he typically places.
"I only order about 100 to 120 trees a year...[the owner] says 'I can give you 30 trees,'" Corey said. "I drive five-and-a-half hours up there, two to three hours to get loaded, five-and-half-hours back and I needed at least twice that to make it worth my time."
Corey said he called the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association to see if he could place an order with another farm, and he had no luck - everyone had sold their supply for the year.
Corey said there's more than one issue driving the shortage. Many North Carolina tree farms closed during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, so there's a smaller supply. Off and on drought conditions over the last few years has impacted tree growth. Also, a labor shortage is part of the problem.
"There's a lot of work to Christmas trees," Corey said. "It's a year-round venture between planting and harvesting and trimming and cleaning and a lot of spraying and a lot of weed control and so forth, it just never seems to end."
If there's a silver lining to the tree shortage, it's coming from Georgia Christmas tree farmers. Granted, Georgia's climate is not conducive to growing firs, but the state is home to dozens of tree farms that grow cypress varieties, cedars and pines.
Greg Smith is the Operations Manager for 7 G's Farm in Nicholson, and he said his family business grows every year.
"We've got about 5,000 trees in the ground right now and we fully expect to sell about 1,200 of them this year to our customers," Smith said.
In fact, the last few years, 7 G's has sold out of its tree supply in less than three weeks.
Smith, who is also a Director with the Georgia Christmas Tree Growers Association, said his fellow Christmas tree farmers have a good supply of trees for this season.
"You know, we just had our Georgia Christmas Tree Growers meeting here at our farm [not long ago] and all the farmers that attended say they have excellent crops and excellent numbers," Smith said.
