{"id":284705,"date":"2025-11-15T12:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T12:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284705\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T12:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T12:49:11","slug":"n-b-christmas-tree-farm-suffers-the-effects-of-months-long-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284705\/","title":{"rendered":"N.B. Christmas tree farm suffers the effects of months-long drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 3 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The Red-Robin Christmas tree farm is usually a sea of green leading up to the holiday season, but not this year.<\/p>\n

Gerald Redmond says his lot in Keswick Ridge has patches of burnt orange scattered throughout.<\/p>\n

A wet spring paired with a historically dry summer has killed 80 to 90 per cent of the roughly 1,300 seedlings he planted in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a little concerned in the spring because of the excess moisture, and then I thought, well, this will be a pretty good summer for survival,” Redmond said. “Well, I was wrong on that.”<\/p>\n

Most of the impact of the lost seedlings won\u2019t be seen for six to 10 years, when they would normally be ready to be harvested and decorated.<\/p>\n

WATCH | \u2018We didn\u2019t get any substantial rain until it was too late,\u2019 tree farmer says:\"\"<\/p>\n

N.B. Christmas tree farmer loses seedlings to drought<\/p>\n

Gerald Redmond of Red-Robin Christmas Tree Farm in Keswick Ridge says drought claimed 80 to 90 per cent of the seedlings he planted this year. He says he has lots of mature trees for customers to choose from this year, but “eight years from now it might be a little different story.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a $2,000 to $3,000 loss, you know, of spring seedlings, but you know, in today’s dollars it would translate in somewhere between, you know, $50,000, $75,000, $80,000 in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redmond might be able to recover the potential loss next year by planting extra trees and hoping for better growing conditions.<\/p>\n

But several years of summer drought could become a more significant problem, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’ll be interesting if I’m still kicking around in eight years, you know, I may be dealing with a problem of a lack of trees, you know, in the seven or eight-foot range.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redmond also lost larger trees to drought, which he hasn\u2019t seen in his 25 years as a tree farmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first year that really I’ve seen, you know, a few hundred, probably larger trees that are either close to maturity, you know, for harvesting or a little younger that didn’t make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManGerald Redmond of the Red-Robin Christmas tree farm could lose thousands of dollars because of the death of the seedlings he planted this spring. (Michael Heenan\/CBC)<\/p>\n

He said searching for a Christmas tree this year shouldn\u2019t be a burden for people because there are still lots to choose from.<\/p>\n

He grows balsam fir, which he said are resilient, and he hopes their genetics can get them through dry conditions.<\/p>\n

\"VariousGerald Redmond lost a few hundred large trees as well as seedlings, which is a first in the 25 years he’s been growing. (Michael Heenan\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Don Fox is the director of the province\u2019s air and water sciences branch and said current drought conditions are severe.<\/p>\n

Fox said about half the province is in extreme drought, which is the third highest of the four categories of drought. Fox said the entire province is at least in the first category of drought.<\/p>\n

As of late September, a small area in the southeast of the province faced an exceptional drought \u2014 the highest category.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the northwest faced the least severe drought conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe normally would not see large areas in the extreme or exceptional drought categories,” Fox said. “This is quite unique. It could be an event that would happen like, for example. once every 50 years on average.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-284705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}