By Mikayla van Loon
Despite living expenses rising, the community were quick to purchase their real Christmas trees again this year in Montrose, selling out in just five days.
For the Mazzella family from Montrose Christmas Tree Farm, the excitement of opening their gates to hundreds of people on the last weekend of November is always a joyous occasion.
But Anthony Mazzella said with many more factors in play this year about whether people would spend money on a real tree left the family overwhelmed with the positive response.
“We were a bit skeptical this year because last year with Covid everyone had to stay home but this year everyone was able to travel interstate,” he said.
“Then also because of inflation we weren’t sure if everyone was still going to be wanting to spend that money on a real Christmas tree? Were they going to want to spend it elsewhere?”
Opening up to the public on Friday 25 November at 9am, Carlo Mazzella counted at least 50 cars waiting to collect their tree before school, work or just starting their day.
“Right from the get go that Friday just went nuts in the first couple of hours, everyone just trying to get in to reserve their free.
During the day it chilled out a little bit and then in the afternoon after school it just went berserk again and even on the weekend like Saturday, Sunday, was very consistent the whole day.
“We were just really run off our feet, which caught us off guard. We knew we were going to be busy but this year was just unbelievable how busy we were.”
Although excessive rain did impact the growth of some trees, Anthony said the majority were unaffected by the rain.
“This year’s batch for us wasn’t too affected by the rain, there were a few trees that did get a little bit too much water but overall, I’d probably say upwards of 95 per cent of our patch was unaffected.
“We were pretty lucky here compared to New South Wales farms, they just had a terrible time up there with the weather. So we’re pretty lucky with this year’s sales.”
While the weather led to some shortages across the country, Anthony said because of higher demand, this also contributed to the shortages seen elsewhere.
“We already knew going into this year we were going to have a few less trees and we thought we were going to sell out quicker but then the amount of people that just came through the doors earlier than last year really helped us sell out quickly.
“But then this year’s batch sold so quickly that we had to start [dipping] into next year’s batch as well.
“By Sunday night we were already going into next year’s batch, so after three days we’d sold that many trees and we’d hate to turn away customers on our first weekend that we just tried to get the biggest trees from next year’s batch to help them out.”
This won’t have any effect on the quantity of trees available next year having a larger section of trees planted for 2023 but it did come as a surprise.
Yet again, Anthony said he and his family were extremely grateful for the support from the community.
“It’s always great to see the support we receive from the customers, being Christmas time they’re generally pretty happy but the people we see there, they always come in with a smile on their face.
“It’s really good for us and rewarding for us to see them come in, have a great experience and see the trees cut down, the kids get a real kick out of watching their tree get cut down and get thrown on the back of the buggy and taken up to their car.”
