ELK PARK, N.C. (WJHL) — Families are baring the wind to continue their yearly tradition of picking their Christmas tree from the Elk River Evergreens tree farm.
Elk River Evergreens is a family-owned business that has been around for almost 50 years. It’s a tree farm where families can look at trees, pick the best one for them and a worker comes to cut it for them.
Families return year after year for the experience, like the Carter family.
“Experience yeah. Being able to cut them down and just…the big variety too that they have so it’s just nice to be able to come out here as a family and it’s like a tradition that we’ve kind of started.. so just fun. And it’s a beautiful place,” said the family.
Gary Edwards, Co-owner of Elk River Evergreens, told News Channel 11 that families have been coming to the tree farm for 25 years. “It’s a family tradition. And [they] come and they’ll spend two or three hours.”
Many commercial ‘choose and cut’ tree farms like Elk River Evergreens have closed due to supply chain issues, said Edwards. Inflation has also caused the farm to pay more for materials like pesticides, labor and gas to run their vehicles.
Edwards said they’ve tried their best to not let it affect their tree prices.
“We went up a little bit on our trees but not much. Even though the cost has really gone up for growing our trees, we’re trying to keep the cost down and [we] realize what people have to pay and so the people come. They love to come get a tree.”
Elk River Evergreen tree farm is open for two more weeks until December 11.
