HERMITAGE Customers will surely pine for Moore's Christmas Trees

The mom-and-pop operation was selling 1,000 trees a season at one time.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- Families have made the trip to Moore's Christmas Trees on Lorenwood Drive for decades to cut down their annual holiday tree, but that tradition is coming to an end.
Margaret and Curtis Moore are shutting down their family operation with the close of this Christmas season.
It's a matter of their age -- she's 77 and he turns 82 this week -- and her husband's failing health, Margaret Moore said.
Keeping up the tree farm is just too big a chore anymore, she said.
A family affair
Moore's Christmas Trees was a true "mom-and-pop" operation, though the couple's children and later their grandchildren helped with the task of trimming trees in June and selling them in December.
The Christmas tree business, offering Scotch and red pines, blue spruce and fir, was never an occupation. It was more of a hobby, Mrs. Moore said.
Her husband was still working as an electrical engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corp. when they decided to plant trees on about 30 acres they owned on Lorenwood Drive.
"We started planting trees in 1952-53," she said.
The price has remained constant for years at $20 for a pine and $25 for a spruce or fir.
They dropped those prices to $15 and $20 this year in an effort to sell as many trees as they can.
Their land slowly has been sold off for individual home building lots over the years, and the rest of the property will go that same route. Most of the remaining trees will probably eventually be bulldozed to make way for houses, she said.
Sales dwindle
At the height of their operation, they were selling 1,000 trees a year, but the numbers have been dropping. Last year, they sold only few a hundred, Mrs. Moore said.
"I think people have probably gone to artificial trees," she said.
Yet, there is still interest in real trees for the holidays.
"People are disappointed we're going to quit selling," Mrs. Moore said. "We have people who come every year. They brought their kids, and now those kids are bringing their little kids to cut trees -- sort of like a family tradition.
"It's been an interesting adventure. You meet a lot of nice people," she said.
Their own four children and their grandchildren helped with the tree trimming from the time they were 8 or 9 years old until they went off to college.
One daughter still comes home from Virginia every June to help with the task, which can take several weeks.
"All of us getting together in the fields was a lot of fun," Mrs. Moore said, noting that the children never complained, even though they didn't get paid for their efforts until the trees were sold in December.
The Moores also occasionally hired neighborhood boys to help with the trees.
They didn't get rich
"It's not a money-making proposition," she said, explaining that sales revenues went back into the trees. There was spraying required to fight diseases, fields to be mowed so people could walk around the trees, and they planted about 2,500 trees each year, she said.
People always were encouraged to cut their own trees, and the Moores would provide the saw or even cut a tree for someone. They also kept a supply of freshly cut trees for people to choose from but had to abandon that practice this year, Mrs. Moore said.
"The people have been real nice through the years. They made Christmas," she said.
gwin@vindy.com