A Year in the Life of a Christmas Tree Farmer

By: Lisa Foust Prater

In 1839, Simon Wyckoff bought 172 acres of what is now Warren County in central New Jersey. More than 100 years later, in 1958, the fifth and sixth generations of Wyckoffs, who had transitioned to dairy farming, planted 1,000 Norway spruce seedlings on a difficult piece of ground. Their first harvest was in 1967, when they sold six trees for $5 each. In 1970, they sold the cows, and the family became full-time Christmas tree farmers.

John Wyckoff is the seventh generation to run the family farm. Today, Wyckoff’s Christmas Tree Farm has more than a dozen species planted on about 70 acres.