Where Have All the Christmas Tree Farms Gone?

A lot, it seems.

Many tree farmers are growing older and choosing to retire. In Indiana, more than 40% of Christmas tree farms have disappeared since 2002. The farmers who remain told me they’re a misunderstood bunch.

“It sounds cushy,” said Carrie Cusick, a 40-year-old farmer in Wanatah. “‘Oh, you only have Christmas trees?’ But it’s hard work.”

At her tranquil farm, needles from Frasier firs crunched underfoot and filled the air with a woody scent. Business has boomed this year, partly because two nearby farms shut down.

Trees alone don’t seem to be enough anymore. “You’ve got to have Santa Claus, you’ve got to have hot chocolate, you’ve got to have a hayride,” said Rick Robbins, who owns Dreamland Christmas Tree Farm in Williamsport. But Robbins, who has been in the business for 39 years, is a purist. “I tell people: ‘I’m a tree farmer. I don’t want to entertain you,’ ” he said.

The job doesn’t appeal to everybody. Patience is essential. It usually takes at least six years before the trees that farmers plant each spring are tall enough to sell. And not all of them are pretty enough to end up in a living room.

Misshapen or spindly trees are chopped up and turned into wreaths or door swags.

Summer means time to trim. Tree farmers use sharp, long knives, trimming each tree with precise, upward sweeps of the blade. They spend entire days out in the fields, which have neat rows of trees carefully marked by the year they will eventually be sold. It is a task suited for solitary perfectionists.

“My husband does all the trimming himself,” said Kathy Wendt, an owner of Lost Forty Tree Farm in Greenfield.

Alternating droughts and floods in recent years have made business difficult. This year, the Wendts had so few trees to sell that they opened for a single weekend.

Plenty of people prize the ease of an artificial tree. But farmers said they saw a lot of younger customers, especially millennials, who prefer the real thing to its plastic counterpart.

Sheets Christmas Tree Farm, in Osgood, proudly supplied the White House Christmas tree in 1968. This season will be its last, said Kebe Sheets, the owner. The cost of equipment and labor keeps going up. The farm will stay open, but the trees will be replaced by other crops.

“I was born into this,” he said. “It’s just time to bow out. It’s time to do something different.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .