Isaac Donsky
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
As the holiday season approaches, many Marylanders are beginning their search for the centerpiece of their Christmas: The perfect Christmas tree.
This year, though, things are different. A global pandemic continues to rage and cases are skyrocketing across the United States. So those who wish to cut their own trees might be tempted to put down their saws and stay in.
Well, don’t give up just yet.
Local pick-your-own Christmas tree farms have anticipated the challenges they’ll face this year, and they’ve gone ahead with the precautions necessary to ensure that their trees find homes. There’s good reason to suspect they’ll succeed, they say: pick-your-own farms have done well during the pandemic.
“Despite the shutdowns, we’ve been thriving,” said Tyler Butler, the general manager of Butler’s Orchard.
Butler’s Orchard is a small pick-your-own farm in Germantown, Maryland. When the pandemic began, Butler’s made significant changes to its operations in order to continue doing business. New precautions were put in place, including online reservations for picking and sanitizing stations located in the fields.
The key factor in Butler’s success, though, has been community support.
“The support from the community has been incredible,” Butler said. “Back in May, we had a doughnuts and cider curbside sale over Memorial Day weekend. So many people showed up that some were waiting for an hour.”
While Butler’s approach shows that pick-your-own farms can survive in a pandemic with community support and precautions, it has the advantage of being open for business year-round. That’s not the case for Christmas-tree specific farms, which just opened during the past few weeks.
“Our season doesn’t start until November 27, so we don’t know what impact the pandemic will have on our business yet,” said Michael Ryan, owner of the Clemsonville Christmas Tree Farm in Union Bridge, Maryland.
Clemsonville is a Christmas tree-only farm that allows its customers to walk freely across its 250 acres of land, cutting their own trees with saws provided by the farm. While the farm will be open to the public for the 2020 holiday season, many changes have been made.
“We usually have refreshments available and a man playing Santa in a barn,” Ryan said. “Not this year. Because of the virus, we had to end anything that could put people at risk.”
As with other farms, Clemsonville has taken major precautions to ensure the safety of its customers. Only 25 people will be allowed in at one time, and saws will be sanitized after each use. While Ryan isn’t sure how COVID will impact his business, he and other tree farmers have already faced a more pressing problem.
“We lost a number of our Douglas Firs before the season even started,” Ryan said. “A parasitic needle cast fungus took them out. We don’t have the tremendous numbers that we’re used to as a result.”
Yet despite the precautions Ryan and others have put in place, some consumers may not feel comfortable cutting down their own tree – especially if they live in cities hit hard by COVID. Luckily, an alternative exists.
In Baltimore, the Pork N’ Pine tree delivery service spends weeks leading up to Christmas delivering trees across the Federal Hill and Patterson Park neighborhoods. As the only tree delivery service in Baltimore, Pork N’ Pine expects this holiday season to be more hectic than any other.
“We imagine that this year will see more orders than ever before,” said spokeswoman Elisha Coleman. “We have prepared for that.”
Pork N’ Pine, which delivered 150 trees last year, gets its trees from a Pennsylvania farm. It delivers them directly to customers’ homes, usually by employees dressed as Santa.
While the delivery Santas usually help customers set up their trees, things will look different this year.
“This year we have to spread cheer from afar,” said Coleman. “We’ll deliver trees while keeping our distance, so we won’t come inside. Our Santa helpers will try to deliver the same Christmas cheer that they did last year.”
Instead of knocking on the door with a big white beard, Santa will be knocking on the door with a big white mask.