Selling Christmas Trees in TX-Week 4

 December 8-14, 2020

Day 22, laundry day Tuesday, once again back to Wash’n Dry here in Carrollton where Helen, one of the owners, was once again the friendliest person in the world. Once my wash was started we talked for about a half-hour. If you are in this area and ever need a laundromat, I highly recommend these folks. Reasonably priced, clean, and friendly.

I was home by 8:45, we opened up and are still awaiting our first sale. While awaiting customers we have taken down center tree supports, it really opens up the place.

Our first tree was around 10’sh. Around noon we got a knock on the door and it was our good friend Pat. He had been visiting one of his sons who is about 45 minutes away so he thought he’d stop in and say hi. It was such a great surprise!! Thank you so much for the visit Pat, we’ll see you in 3 weeks.

By the time Pat left we had 3 trees sold. It never did get busy, but we ended the day with some sales. While the day may have started cold, with frost on the windshield this morning, it turned into a no jacket required afternoon before once again cooling down.

On Facebook today Dave shared some before and after pictures, so for those of you who are not on Facebook. Here’s what’s been our main goal since July 20^th.

June 2020

December 2020

Today we sold 11 trees, bringing our total sold to 572 with only 146 trees left on the lot.

Day 23, a grocery run morning, today Dave decided to go too and get off the lot for an hour. $250 later we’ve now stocked the freezer with some beef, we picked up a beef brisket that we cut into thirds. One-third of the brisket goes into the brine today. Some tenderloins and pork ribs are freezing up for the days when we’re off the lot.

11am and no trees sold, but when Ralph made his daily rounds he and Dave pulled 10 trees from our stock, these trees were in sad shape, they will be picked up and either become fish habits, goat food, or wood chips for the town. The brisket is in the brine, sucking in some deliciousness, cravings for tomorrow’s dinner have started. It’s not too many places we can find good brisket cuts but WinCo had some today, dinner tomorrow is shaping up already.  Tonight’s tenderloin dinner hit the spot and we ate uninterrupted.

1:15pm our first sale of the day, finally, by 4pm we only had 3 trees sold. By 8pm we had 10 sales on the books, lots of folks looking for big trees but walking away still looking. Our biggest trees at this point are about 7’ tall. Probably ½ the people coming in left without finding a tree to fit their wants.

Total trees sold today 11, total sales so far 583 with now only 125 trees left on the lot.

Day 24, brisket in the smoker first thing this morning!! No customers till early afternoon. Our daily visit from Ralph came with the word we weren’t getting any more trees, yeah!! In my opinion, our sales don’t warrant any more trees unless they’re tall trees. So many folks will be disappointed this weekend, many are hardly even going inside the tent when they see our supply of trees, very clear we don’t have much left.

Since it was a beautiful sunny December North Texas day, we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine amid all the road noise from the nearby President George Bush Tollway and its frontage road. The brisket and wild rice turned out good, leftovers for this weekend. Slowly, tree by tree we managed to squeak some sales out today.

A comment Jim made summed it up well, Groundhog Day, thankfully for only 30 days, only a little longer,and jacks up. J  

Total we sold today 13, with only 112 left on the lot, which brings the total sold to 596 plus 10 discarded. Some of the discarded trees ended up being given to a local nonprofit that works with kids of homeless people.

Day 25, Friday the 11^th of December, our 4^th weekend open, I wonder how many trees we will have when it’s over.  8am the motion detector goes off and we have our first sale on the books. We did a little more dismantling and the center is now completely open. About 9am the rain started and lasted for a few hours, enough to water the trees but not so much as to make it muddy. By noon we had sold our 2^nd tree of the day. The day never got busy and we had very sporadic customers, some of them got out of their vehicles, started into the tent, and turned around. Others are asking when we’ll be getting our larger trees. Then the words “we’ve sold 600+ trees already, this is all that’s left” come out of our mouths and their eyes open wide in astonishment, then they exclaim “we always buy our 13’ tree the second weekend in December”. Not this year!! And trees are not fresher by buying closer to Christmas, it’s been ab long time since they had a really good drink of water.

Today we sold a measly 7 trees, bringing our total sold to 603 trees plus 10 discarded, we have left 105 trees for the weekend.

Day 26, a slow start to Saturday, only 1 tree on the books at 10am. When Ralph stopped by he said we all were leaving on Thursday, Becky, his wife, has doctor’s appointments on Tuesday for her wrist she’s broken since being here. Ralph is seeing doctors on Wednesday for his cancer. They’ll be around Wednesday evening to pay everyone and we’ll be heading to Jim Hogg COE Park in Georgetown on Thursday morning. But till the end, we’ll get as many trees sold as we can. Just need some customers to show up. Today stayed slow for the most part though by the time we closed we had sold a decent amount of trees.

Dave trying to draw in customers

Total trees sold today is 25, which makes for 628 trees sold plus 10 discarded, leaving us with 80 trees, which should be plenty to last till we leave. So nice to see these numbers going down and not continuing to grow.

Day 27, the last Sunday we’re open and it started raining around 6:30am. They say it’s going to last all morning and then get windy and cold, I don’t see many trees being sold. We’ve now sold 200 more trees than last year, though because of the price point on the trees at this lot we’re just not getting to the $$$’s we took in at Keller.

By noon we had 2 wet soggy sales, by 8:30pm we had topped out at 6 sales for the day. Not the day that Ralph hoped for but considering the temps were in the ’40s, lots of wind and rain all day, we weren’t surprised.

Total sold today 6 trees, a total of 634 trees sold and 10 discarded, with only 74 trees left on the lot.

Day 28, just a few more to go. Cold morning, temps in the low 40’s. About 8:45 we headed out into the cold morning, at least the sun was shining, and started more of the takedown process. Lots of our things will be picked up today, Wednesday we'll finish up. We‘ve taken down all the boards supporting the trees, put up some twine to hold them instead. Hoses and most supplies gathered up and readied for pickup. Around 10:30 everything we had readied was picked up. Around noon time we had sold one tree. By 4:30 we hadn’t sold anymore but I had a clean home, I spent a lot of time today cleaning, I haven’t had much chance recently to do a good cleaning but that changed today. Also doing a little getting ready for Thursday when the wheels on the RV start moving. 

The day never did pick up, by 7:30 we had sold 4 trees.

Today’s totals are 5 trees sold, so far 639 trees sold + 10 discarded trees, which gives us only 69 trees left on the lot. 2 more days to sell. 

Until next time...