Some retailers start selling decorations around Halloween, while radio stations switch over to an all Christmas music format well before Thanksgiving

But for Brandon Mytrysak Christmas is a year-round focus. He’s the owner of Mytrysak Family Tree Farm and Growhouse in Indiana County, which sold around 1,000 Christmas trees this year. The day after Thanksgiving is when they open their doors for people looking for the perfect tree, tours and family activities. Then right before the holiday, the doors close.

For Brandon, his wife, Stacey Mytrysak, and even their three young daughters, there’s little downtime before that’s the months-long preparation for the next year’s rush begins.

“People don’t realize that this business here is an all-year thing,” Brandon Mytrysak said. “We’re constantly cleaning up, or getting ready for planting season, or repairing everything that broke during our tree season, mowing, shearing, and all that … In this business, basically we have to make all of our money in about a month to continue on to the next season.”

Ian Karbal/Pennsylvania Capital-Star Brandon Mytrysak drives a tractor retrofitted to resemble a small train near his tree farm on Dec. 18.

Despite the challenges — Brandon also works another full time job and Stacey works part time — a lot of the appeal is the joy they bring to others around the holiday season. But it also connects them to both their family’s and community’s histories.

The Christmas Tree Capital of the World

Signs welcome visitors entering Indiana County to the Christmas Tree Capital of the World. More than two dozen retail and wholesale farms grow Frasier Firs, White Pines, Colorado Spruces, Canaan Firs, Douglas Firs and more for the holiday.

While it’s no longer true, if it ever was, that Indiana County farmers sell more Christmas trees than anywhere else in the world, the Mytrysak family has been part of the tradition for around 75 years, since the nickname first appeared.

According to the Indiana County Christmas Tree Growers Association, the industry began in the area around 1918. In 1956, an estimated 700,000 trees were harvested in the county. That’s around when the Associated Press referred to Indiana County as the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World.”

Ian Karbal/Pennsylvania Capital-Star Stacey Mytrysak poses under a giant wreath on Dec. 18.

In 1958, a challenger emerged. The community of Shelton, Washington, attempted to claim the title for itself. But an Indiana County nursery operator put an end to the effort when he revealed he’d received an order of 15,000 trees to Tacoma, Washington. Another town in the Pacific Northwest — Estacada, Oregon — has also made similar claims recently.

According to the Pennsylvania Christmas Tree Growers Association, the state currently ranks second in the nation for the number of Christmas tree farms and fourth in number of Christmas trees cut each year.

Despite the dwindling number of Christmas Trees sold and growers in Indiana County, the name has stuck. And for a county already steeped in Christmas traditions, it’s been a label they carry with pride.

Indiana Borough, the county seat, is the hometown of Jimmy Stewart, the star of the holiday season staple “It’s A Wonderful Life.” The film made the community a minor tourist destination for Christmas fanatics across the country. There’s a Jimmy Stewart statue and museum, an “It’s a Wonderful Life festival,” and theaters that play the film in December. The main street, Philadelphia Street, is illuminated with Christmas lights for the holidays — some spelling out catchphrases associated with Stewart.

Bus tours full of Christmas tourists stop at the Mytrysak’s farm as well.

“Since we’re the Christmas Tree Capital, people love to just hear about the trees — how they grow, what we do,” Stacey Mytrysak said. “A lot of people think, ‘You plant that tree, next year it’s going to look like a Christmas tree.’ No, no, no. We have to shape them every year and fertilize and everything else. If not, they wouldn’t have that Christmas shape.”

A tree can take between six years and several decades to grow, depending on the size.

On top of working the farm, Stacey Mytrysak runs a gift shop and runs wreath-making classes. She and Brandon have also filled the property with family activities for the holiday season. There are photo stations, tractor wagons, a small train, a fire pit for chilly nights and a winery often sets up a booth during the pre-holiday season.

‘Keeping their memory alive’

Brandon is a third-generation tree farmer. His grandparents first began in the business in the late 1950s, roughly the time the county was labeled as the Christmas Tree Capital of the World.

When he was young, Mytrysak would work the fields with his grandparents and uncle. He helps Brandon and Stacey on the farm.

“I always enjoyed doing it,” Brandon said. “Ever since I can remember, I would be on the four-wheeler with my grandpap, helping him sell trees and talk with people. And in the summer time, he’d be shearing the smaller trees, and I’d be doing the little ones with my hand clippers, and all that stuff.”

“Doing it just kind of is my way of keeping their memory alive,” he added. “And hopefully I’m showing my kids the way, how we do it. Whenever we’re out here, I sit there and say ‘When I was your age, I’d be out here with my grandparents.'”

But Brandon’s grandparents have both since passed away, and the original family farm, a 10 acre plot, was handed down to his uncle, who still runs it.

In 2019, Brandon and Stacey bought the roughly 60 acre plot of land where they work now. Brandon said that’s when his wife got especially involved in the work.

“I could go up in the fields and just shear them all day. That wouldn’t bother me,” Stacey Mytrysak said. “With my kids, I’m able to put them off to school, come out here and work, go pick them up again. That’s what makes it nice, me being able to come out and work here on my own hours.”

Still, it can be a seven-day work week. But, they understand the demands and embrace them. Brandon works full time teaching landscaping to inmates. Stacey is a part time police officer in Windber Borough, Somerset County, and teaches swim lessons at the YMCA.

They also take pride in participating in community events, like hosting the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot to raise funds for the YMCA, or the Christmas in July festival. And each year, they donate trees to military bases around the country through the Trees for Troops program.

“I wish my grandparents were around just to see how we’ve progressed and how good of things we’re doing, not only in the Christmas tree world, but in the community as well,” Brandon Mytrysak said.

In the long run, Brandon and Stacey say their goal is to pay off as much debt on the farm as they can, and get it to be self-sustaining. That way they can give their daughters the option to continue the family tradition when they get older.

They say their older daughters, 8 and 10, are starting to show an affinity for the work, and spending time on the farm.

“They’re doing the same thing that I used to do when I was little,” Brandon Mytrysak said. “My father would dig the holes and I would try to go behind and shove the trees in the holes. Then my dad and uncle would come behind and kick them in.”

Stacey said it’s getting to the point where her kids get upset if they don’t go to the farm for the day, and have told her “‘Mom, you can never get rid of the farm.'”

“I’m okay if they turn it into something else, but I’d like to keep them something farm-wise” she said. “I like horses so I always joke and say, ‘It’s okay if you get horses. My husband gets mad when I say that.”

On Christmas itself, the family typically goes to either Brandon’s mom’s or Stacey’s parents’ house, where presents are waiting under a tree, from Indiana County, of course.

“That’s usually where we try to catch our breath, so to speak, and enjoy our kids and our families,” Brandon Mytrysak said. “Then it’s out here [to the farm], and away we go.

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