More families chop down Christmas trees themselves

Christmas treeChristmas trees packed for sale. Photo: pixabay.com

Norwegian Christmas tree production is on the rise again, and supplementary income has reached a new momentum with self-felling.

Families across the country are choosing to spice up the Christmas preparations by chopping down their own Christmas tree.

Over the next few weeks, griddle pans will be heating, and bivouacs will be full of expectant children in places where they might meet Santa Claus, riding a one horse open sleigh, as folk help themselves generously to gingerbread and mulled wine.

‘It is very interesting for producers to offer self-felling of Christmas trees. Many excel at building adventure packages based around harvesting. It provides customers with exciting experiences, and provides important revenue for farms involved in production’, said chairman, Bjorn Helge Bjørnstad, of the organization Norsk Juletre (Norwegian Christmas Tree), to the news agency NTB.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, there will be roughly 1.8 million households who acquire their own Christmas tree. More than 1.1 million of these stem from professional Christmas tree production.

According to Norsk Juletre, the import of wood from (mainly) Denmark has been reduced, stabilizing at around 300,000 trees.

‘There are new and greater quality requirements to satisfy a consumer preference; that is the reason that imports have dropped. 10 to 15 years ago, many Christmas trees were raised from conventional forestry. There is little left of that, because it doesn’t supply the trees that consumers want’, said John-Anders Strande, general manager of the producer organization.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today