Christmas tree growers are frantically navigating flooded forests, damaged highways and gasoline shortages to deliver yuletide greenery to retailers and charities — even the B.C. legislature.
Complicating matters for the yearly Christmas ritual is a lack of supply — not only this year but for years to come — as many growers reported needle scorching of mature Christmas trees and seedling die-offs because of the heat dome in late June and record heat waves and drought throughout the summer.
Kim Frocklage, who has been organizing Christmas tree sales for the Braefoot Athletic Association for 25 years, returned to the Island Tuesday morning after a harrowing journey to pick up trees in Invermere in the East Kootenays.
Frocklage, with truck and trailer, was stopped by a massive mudslide in Princeton and had to take a 15-hour detour through Lillooet and Pemberton to get back to the Island. She said blizzard conditions through the mountain passes made for “white-knuckle” driving the whole way.
“I couldn’t believe I made it,” she said. “There were some tense moments. I guess you have to have a certain amount of tenacity. But all I really want is for people to have a nice Christmas.”
Frocklage was unloading trees at the lacrosse box at Braefoot Park in Saanich for the start of sales on Friday. She will have about 1,200 trees, including loads she picked up from Oregon and the Sahtlam Tree Farm near Duncan.
Joan Fleming, who operates Saanichton Christmas Tree Farm on the Peninsula and a 50-acre plot in the Shawnigan Lake area, managed to get her signature tree to the B.C. legislature on Tuesday morning.
The Fleming family has provided the evergreen in the legislature rotunda for more than 50 years “as a gift to the people of B.C.”
This year’s tree is a 45-year-old western white pine, and Fleming’s crews were able to navigate the 35-foot tree through backlogged Malahat traffic and set it up.
But crews are late cutting other trees at Shawnigan and getting them to the Saanichton Farm in time for farm-gate sales that start on Friday.
“People started asking for trees two weeks ago,” said Fleming. “Now gas is scarce … it’s going to get really busy.”
Fleming said she was feeling “very fortunate” because her trees in the Shawnigan area avoided scorched needles, as they were grown at higher elevations. At her farm in Saanichton, experience has taught her that watering at night, rather than during the daytime heat, gives trees time to absorb the water off needles.
Fleming was hoping to augment her inventory with alpine firs from the East Kootenays, but owners there sold them all to retailers in Calgary this week because sections of highways to the coast were destroyed by last week’s flooding.
“They had them all cut and ready to ship and then the flooding shut everything down. They didn’t want to be stuck with a bunch of trees, so they sold them,” said Fleming.
Robert Russell, who operates the 20-acre Sahtlam Tree Farm near Duncan, is cutting up to 3,000 trees this year that will be sold at retail outlets like the Root Cellar in Greater Victoria and charitable organizations like the Camp Barnard Scout Camp, who sell the trees outside Canadian Tire on the West Shore.
Russell said harvests this year, and likely next, will be OK. But he said severe heat and drought over the past four years has caused seedlings to die out and put future harvests of Christmas trees in jeopardy.
Russell has tried rotating from spring to fall plantings, but droughts in key growing periods like spring and summer continue to cause die-offs.
“It’s getting pretty severe,” said the 83-year-old, who been growing Christmas trees for 50 years. “I think we’ll have one more year of 3,000 trees, then it will be depleted from there on. It all depends on Mother Nature.”
Russell said Christmas farms are disappearing, noting a nearby grower sold half his property this year. He added several members of the Christmas Tree Council of B.C. affected by the floods in the Fraser Valley also face a troubled future, as inventory can’t be delivered after massive flooding continues to blocks key transportation routes.
“There are three or four big farms in there, and it’s not going to be good for them,” Russell said.
Timothy Hale, who operates Cairn Park Nursery in the Cowichan Valley and supplies seedlings to growers, said he lost much of his crop this summer because of the severe heat — including the week-long heat dome that saw temperatures soar as high as 40 C.
He said providing ample shade and water for seedlings is now essential as climate conditions change.
Hale said he shipped about 20,000 seedlings in small batches in 2020, but it will be less this year because of the die-offs.
He said he hopes to increase his capacity by up to 80,000 trees in future years, as long as demand remains strong.
