A family of Christmas tree farmers has faced major losses and challenges since the 1970s. They say climate change is to blame.

• Droughts, wildfires, and flooding have led to unfavorable conditions for Christmas tree growing.
• A family of Christmas tree farmers told Insider about the impact of climate change on their farms.
• Buying real Christmas trees can be part of climate change solutions, an ecology expert told Insider.

After serving in Vietnam in 1967, Jim Steadman started selling Christmas trees to make some cash for skiing.

He found his passion in the tree-growing industry and has been in the business ever since, later founding Maple Hollow Tree Farm in 1976 in New Hartford, Connecticut.

But climate change events, such as extended droughts, wildfires, and flooding, have led to unfavorable conditions for Christmas trees, and subsequently, a nationwide Christmas tree shortage, Insider previously reported. And because Christmas trees can take up to seven to ten years to grow to an optimal height and size for selling, the negative impacts of climate change on the industry are seen for years to come.

For example, Hurricane Irene in 2011 brought unwelcome flooding and destroyed about 25% of his trees, Steadman said. He ended up selling the last of them in 2020.

Steadman also noted that the 2016 drought “was pretty bad.” It was the Northeast’s worst drought in over a decade, forcing farmers across the region to tackle extremely dry weather with irrigation systems, according to NPR.

“It was probably in the last five years, or say seven years, that we first had to introduce irrigation, and as time went on, it became worse,” Steadman said.

Jesse Steadman — Jim Steadman’s oldest son who grew up on the Christmas tree farm — started his own Christmas farm with his wife Jamie in Stow, Massachusetts, in 2014 and just sold their first trees this year.

“It took seven years to have one dime come in,” Jesse Steadman said. “Luckily, we both work different separate full-time jobs right now, and we have been very involved in my parents’ farm in Connecticut.” 

Jesse Steadman said the 2016 drought killed 1,000 of the 1,300 trees they planted that year, but they have since turned to irrigation to mitigate the loss.

“We never grew up irrigating trees,” Jesse Steadman said. “It wasn’t really part of what we did.”

Both Jesse and Jim Steadman agreed that irrigation is part of the solution to help them grow trees now. The younger Steadman added that he relies on transplant beds with trees from other places, “so that we have replacements to kind of deal with whatever shock comes with the season,” he said.

Some popular Christmas tree species include the Canaan fir, the Balsam Fir, the Frasier Fir, and the Blue Spruce. But not all replacement species of trees can make the cut.

“The numbers of species that we can rely on to grow, it seems to be going down too, we don’t have as many as we used to,” Jim Steadman said.

On top of all that, invasive species, diseases, and deer also threaten the crop.

“I think everyone would like to continue growing Frasier Firs and Balsam Firs because they’re so popular, but they’re more susceptible to climate impacts, like drought, like freezing, and insects and diseases,” Andy Finton, a forest ecologist for The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts, told Insider.

Finton said, apart from government-level decisions on forest protection and management, buying real trees could be part of the solution to the climate change-related predicament plaguing the Christmas tree industry.

“You’re supporting a farmer, helping them maintain their livelihood, helping them, keeping that farm viable, which actually is important for their livelihood [and] for future Christmas trees, but it can also be part of the climate solution,” Finton said. “For every tree that’s cut each year, there are nine more growing in the field, so only about a 10th of the Christmas trees growing in the US are cut each year.”

In spite of the challenges to growing trees, the Steadmans said they will continue to persist.

“I still have that passion, and I still have some hope that I’m going to be able to carry on regardless of what’s thrown at us,” Jim Steadman said. “I just anticipate it’s going to be more difficult.”