Bluebird Tree Farm runs out of trees, closes for 2024 holiday season
A staff member at the Bluebird Christmas Tree Farm in Heiskell assists a customer with a purchase. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The farm opened for the 2024 season the weekend before Thanksgiving, and had planned to be open until the weekend before Christmas, but that depended on the stock of trees holding out for longer than it did.
But the bulk of the available trees were gone as of the end of business on Sunday, Dec. 2, and there were not enough trees to sell after last Friday, the farm posted on Facebook.
On Friday morning (Dec. 6), the following notice was posted:
“We have very few trees remaining as of 1:30 on Friday, Dec. 6. … We expect to be out of Fraser firs and Norway spruce by 4 o’clock this afternoon. We will close for the season tonight at 8.”
Besides the live trees on the farm and the cut trees imported from Western North Carolina, the farm also had trees from Oregon available for the 2024 holiday season.
Collins said that he plans to send $3,000 each to the two North Carolina farms he bought trees from this year that were heavily damaged by the flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in late September.
He bought the extra trees from the farms this year to help them recover from the damage to their buildings, and pledged to donate part of the proceeds of the sales of those trees back to the farms to help them rebuild.
The two big family-owned tree farms that supply most of Bluebird’s pre-cut trees – Fraser firs – are in the part of Western North Carolina area ravaged by the storm, but they still had plenty of trees available for their customers for the 2024 season.
“The trees mostly came through the flooding without damage,” Collins said earlier.
“However, both farms suffered damage to buildings and equipment, so we purchased 800 additional trees to support their financial recovery.”
Collins said he had about 300 of his own Norway spruce and Leyland cypress trees ready to sell this year from his fields, but by the end of Thanksgiving weekend, most of those were already gone.
“We still have a lot of cut trees still on hand, but we’re going through a lot of trees,” he said Nov. 30 as dozens of people wandered the big tent and the fields shopping for their trees.
Bluebird imported Frasier firs from North Carolina and Douglas firs from Oregon.
For the past 40 years, Collins has run the tree farm at 985 Brushy Valley Road in the Heiskell community. The farm also has a gift shop.
