Unless you start your Christmas tree hunt early this season, securing that perfect slice of holiday tradition can be a challenge.
The Canadian Christmas Tree Association said there is a supply shortage in North America, driven by increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christmas trees are a $ 100 million a year industry in Canada with a value of $ 49 million in products exported primarily to the United States, according to CEO Shirley Brennan.
Wholesalers can’t keep up with retail demand and even IKEA won’t be selling actual trees in its Canadian stores this holiday season.
The world’s largest furniture brand was unable to secure the necessary local supply of live Christmas trees to meet the needs of its Canadian business this year.
Brennan said we are losing Christmas tree farms as owners age or retire, while Pacific Northwest growers are also struggling with a lack of cooperation from their silent partner, Mother Nature.
“Unfortunately, British Columbia has been hit hard this year by extreme weather conditions,” Brennan told Global News.
The summer heat dome and now a flood disaster have wreaked havoc on crops that take a decade to grow.
“For ten years, you’ve grown those trees and then for this to happen,” Brennan said.
“It is devastating.”
Read more:
‘There is a shortage of supply’: Demand for Christmas trees is high during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic
At Z & Z Christmas Trees in Richmond, Gord Ferguson said all of his Washington and Oregon trees arrived despite record summer temperatures in both states, but the fallout from disastrous flooding in our province is having an impact.
“These rains and that heat dome we’ve never had that in our lives,” Ferguson told Global News.
Seventy-five percent of Merritt’s pre-cut alpine firs arrived early on Nov. 14, just before the storm stranded their delivery man for days.
“There are still a hundred trees of mine in your garden.”
All of Ferguson’s cheaper and more durable Charlie Brown trees are stuck in Cranbrook due to closures and delays along Highway 3.
“It is unprecedented,” Ferguson said.
“Everybody feels it, you know, the weather is changing.”
At Pine Meadows Tree Farms in Chilliwack, Arthur Loewen has been growing the Christmas staple since 1970.
“I’ve never seen anything like this this time of year,” the longtime tree farmer told Global News.
Most of his U-cut trees were underwater for a week, but Loewen said they are a bountiful harvest and will survive the floods.
With Highway 1 open west of Chilliwack, Loewen said his cut trees have already been delivered and more are being cut for transportation.
Customers, he said, are also coming back to pick and cut their own trees as the waters have receded.
“Heavy rains don’t [going to] Stop us, ”Loewen said.
But the heat dome was something Loewen said they had never experienced before.
Read more:
From fires to floods: how extreme weather has played out in British Columbia in 2021
“Our temperatures reach 45 degrees,” Loewen said.
The intense heat was unrelenting and Loewen hopes to lose up to 1,000 younger trees that were damaged.
“The new growth was so tender it just burned it off,” he said.
“Some were burned directly on the stem. Those trees will probably not be good for us. “
The industry expects U-cut farms to run out of trees sooner, while some buyers are also picking up their pre-cut trees sooner rather than later.
“To make sure we have a chance to get a tree because we don’t know what it is [going to] be it like this year, ”said tree buyer Christian Bacon.
“We tend to overreact as consumers, but you never know,” added Henry Kwaksistala.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Reference-globalnews.ca