“Around our farm, as I look at the crop available for harvest this year, I see nice trees that are 6 to 8 feet high. I can count up to about 5,500 trees. It’s a lot of trees, but if I was going to be open until December 20 like we used to be, I might need 8,000 trees to sell,” said George Richardson, co-owner of Richardson Farm in Spring Grove, which was Good Housekeeping’s pick in 2018 for best Christmas tree farm in Illinois. “And we don’t have that many.”
The Richardson family, fifth and sixth generation farmers whose three branches have planted Christmas trees on their property in McHenry County since 1981, took to Facebook this week to tell customers about the operation’s shortened selling season. It expects all 5,500 of its Christmas trees grown over 130 acres to be sold by Dec. 5.
Other local growers offer the same cautionary tale. Ben’s Christmas Tree Farm in Harvard is only open Thanksgiving weekend and the first weekend in December. Lee’s Trees in Lily Lake has a limited number of tall trees grown on site, but is delivering precut trees from its Wisconsin farm to supplement.
Pioneer Tree Farm in McHenry might have more tall trees available than usual, but it was closed to the public in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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