{"id":37953,"date":"2025-01-20T14:14:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T19:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glensfalls.com\/glensfallsbusinessjournal\/?p=37953"},"modified":"2025-01-20T14:14:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T19:14:29","slug":"from-christmas-trees-to-maple-empire-how-a-warren-county-farm-thrived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glensfalls.com\/glensfallsbusinessjournal\/2025\/01\/from-christmas-trees-to-maple-empire-how-a-warren-county-farm-thrived\/","title":{"rendered":"From Christmas Trees To Maple Empire: How A Warren County Farm Thrived"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Jim Carpenter hangs a Christmas wreath on display at River Bend Christmas Tree Fam in Lake Luzerne.
Courtesy River Bend Christmas Tree Farm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Paul Post<\/p>\n

A family-run Warren County firm has parlayed robust Christmas tree sales into a booming maple products business.<\/p>\n

River Bend Christmas Tree Farm in Lake Luzerne provides fresh-cut trees to nearly 1,000 customers each year.<\/p>\n

But starting in late winter, 78-year-old Bruce Carpenter and his wife, Rosann, spend several weeks producing maple syrup on land they own in Minerva.<\/p>\n

Their son, Jim, 43, puts his RPI business degree to good use by marketing trees and maple with a variety of social media platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrees are a higher ticket item, but maple because it\u2019s consumable can be sold year round,\u201d Jim said. \u201cDuring COVID we had a lot of syrup and not a lot of places to sell it so we trademarked the name, Saratoga Maple, and built a mail-order business where we ship gifts all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to traditional syrup flavors, the Carpenters age maple in a bourbon barrel to make bourbon maple syrup and a bourbon maple cream. They also make a maple walnut topping, maple jelly, hard and soft candy and a gourmet pancake mix that comes in a breakfast gift basket with bags of mix and Adirondack maple syrup.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span>Recent holiday sales were up 30 percent year over year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe set another record,\u201d Jim said. \u201cOn Christmas Day there were still people ordering maple gift baskets and products. This holiday we shipped to Germany, Great Britain, Hawaii, Alaska and hit most of the other states. It was really an exceptional year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response to that business is humungous,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just keeps growing. We\u2019ve had calls from everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>New doors have recently opened at independently-owned ShopRite supermarkets in and around Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were looking for a maple walnut product, came across ours and want to carry it,\u201d Jim said. \u201cIt\u2019s wet walnuts and syrup used as a sundae topping. Now they want to add other products and create a maple section. The person I dealt with talked to other independent store owners in the Philadelphia area and they\u2019re interested in getting in on it, too. So we expect to be in a number of ShopRites this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The maple season keeps getting under way earlier and earlier, in large part due to global warming trends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to go the first of March,\u201d Bruce said. \u201cNow you want to be ready by the first of February.\u201d<\/p>\n

With increased technology, the Carpenters hope to get more yield from the trees they tap. A vacuum system, for example, draws out more sap.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlus we might add more taps and lines and use an internet monitoring system so we know when sap is flowing,\u201d Jim said. \u201cOne of the challenges is that our sugarbush, in Minerva, is so far from the farm here in Luzerne.\u201d<\/p>\n

River Bend is just one of many Christmas tree farms in the surrounding area.<\/p>\n

Saratoga County alone is home to Buell\u2019s Trees (Gansevoort), Candy Cane Farm (Moreau), Bob\u2019s Trees (Galway), Fogg Hollow Farm (Charlton) the Patricia Lawrence farm (Rexford) and Ellms Family Farm in Ballston Spa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a good season,\u201d co-owner Garth Ellms said. \u201cWe set records the first weekend after Thanksgiving. It came out of the gates swinging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tree sales account for about 40 percent of the farm\u2019s diverse revenue stream. Ellms is one of the region\u2019s most popular autumn \u201cagri-tainment\u201d destinations with everything from pumpkin sales to a variety of children\u2019s games and attractions such as mechanical singing chickens and a moo-moo train.<\/p>\n

Tree farms and apple orchards provide a good outlet for many types of locally-produced food products.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the fall we sell local honey and maple syrup,\u201d Ellms said. \u201cPeople just want to take a piece of the local community home with them. The honey we sell is from a man who handles hives on our property. Maple comes from Hop City Maple, about a mile down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to growing Christmas tree demand, the Ellms recently purchased a nearby 72-acre field. Part of it will be used to plant seedlings, which they purchase from suppliers in Pennsylvania and Michigan. The rest will be leased to a local farmer, ensuring that the land stays in agricultural production.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe usually plant between 2000 and 5000 trees per year,\u201d Ellms said. \u201cNow we\u2019re planting 14,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

During COVID, many farms harvested more Christmas trees than normal, in part because there was a large influx of new customers seeking any kind of outdoor, family activity they could find. In addition, COVID impacted farms financially so they made up for it by selling more trees, which reduced supplies in subsequent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were always open four weeks before COVID,\u201d Ellms said. \u201cIt\u2019s been three weeks the past few years because we didn\u2019t have enough trees. But we\u2019re coming back from that. What we have in the fields now is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seedlings are 12-18 inches tall when planted and trees grow approximately one foot per year, so it takes about eight years before trees are ready to harvest.<\/p>\n

Fields will be prepped for planting in spring, but tending to trees is an ongoing process that involves mowing to keep weeds down, and trimming to make sure each tree is well shaped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s non-stop I guess,\u201d Ellms said.<\/p>\n

Mary Jean Packer and partner Dave Campbell operate Mapleland Farms in Salem, Washington County.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody says you must be so busy in March and April. That\u2019s when guys who work in the woods are tapping and gathering sap, boiling and bottling syrup,\u201d she said. \u201cBut autumn and Christmas are extremely busy. It started in September with apple orchards, corn mazes and garden centers all doing fall \u2018agri-tainment\u2019 events. They all want maple products in their gift shops. Then we barely catch our breath and we\u2019re shipping maple candies shaped like Santa Claus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe direct-to-consumer aspect of Christmas trees, sheep farms selling yarns or maple syrup farms selling maple syrup is not to be underestimated when it comes to the economic impact of agriculture in our region,\u201d Packer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Post A family-run Warren County firm has parlayed robust Christmas tree sales into a booming maple products business. River Bend Christmas Tree Farm in Lake Luzerne provides fresh-cut trees to nearly 1,000 customers each year. But starting in late winter, 78-year-old Bruce Carpenter and his wife, Rosann, spend several weeks producing maple syrup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":37954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"yoast_head":"\r\nFrom Christmas Trees To Maple Empire: How A Warren County Farm Thrived - Glens Falls Business Journal<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.glensfalls.com\/glensfallsbusinessjournal\/2025\/01\/from-christmas-trees-to-maple-empire-how-a-warren-county-farm-thrived\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From Christmas Trees To Maple Empire: How A Warren County Farm Thrived - Glens Falls Business Journal\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Paul Post A family-run Warren County firm has parlayed robust Christmas tree sales into a booming maple products business. 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