Rapid Development Is Threatening to Ax a Christmas Tradition

It's just that buying a tree in the parking lot of a big-box retailer isn't quite the same as going out to the woods and sawing one down.

Suzie and Keith Evans of Nokesville have been going to Gehlsen's farm each December for about 10 years to cut their tree. Suzie said it is a family tradition that they used to share with her father before he died. Now her children are grown -- ages 17, 23 and 26 -- but they still make it a family outing. Her eldest, who is married, buys a tree for her house now.

Evans said she has noticed that in the past few years there haven't been as many trees to choose from. "We've always been able to find one, because he has such nice trees, but I've noticed there has been less selection. He's had a lot of little ones recently, but I guess that means there will be more in the future."

In three years, Gehlsen hopes to have 25,000 trees on his farm -- about 1,700 of which will be ready to sell -- because he has increased the number of plantings in the past few years. The trees are priced from $35 to $50.

For now, except for the 500 that are eight feet or taller, the rest of the 20,000 trees in his fields are too short to sell. Yet he knows that once customers come out to the farm with their children looking for a tree, they'll go into the fields and cut whichever one they want, no matter the size.

One year, he said, nuns from a local convent came out early to pick out their tree, which was then marked with police tape and signs stating that it was reserved, but someone cut it anyway.

"I went out into the field to check on it one day, and all the tape was lying on the ground," he said.

Leslie Harlan, the other remaining Christmas tree grower in Prince William, said he has a good supply of taller trees this season. "I'm all right for this year," said Harlan, who has about 300 bigger trees to sell. "Then I will be in the same boat as [Gehlsen] in about two years, because I lost a lot of seedlings to drought -- a couple thousand -- about three years ago."

Harlan said he doesn't advertise. "When I have trees, people seem to come." He'll open his Nokesville farm next weekend and remain open weekends until his supply is gone.

For this year, Gehlsen will open for business and hope for the best, which in this case, means less. He'll be watching his stock closely.

"If the trees got scarce, I'd have to close," he said. "If I get bushwhacked the first and second weekend we're open, I wouldn't want to, but I'd have to."