White House Christmas selected from a New Jersey farm for the first time

At the White House, it’s going to be a Very Jersey Christmas.
For the first time, the White House Christmas trees have been selected from a New Jersey farm.
Four Douglas firs, between 9 and 10 feet tall, were picked today from Wyckoff’s, a 170-acre farm now being run by the family’s seventh generation in White Township.
John Wyckoff and his family got the honor after winning a contest through the trade group, the National Christmas Tree Association. The family will get to see the trees at the White House.

New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher welcomed Reid and White House Chief Groundskeeper Dale Haney and Chief Horticulturist Jim Adams to the farm from high atop Warren County, with views of 20 miles in each direction and the cock-a-doodle-doo of a rooster echoing in the autumn air.

Here, evergreen conifers are treated as delicately as children in a process that takes 11 years from planting to harvesting.
John Wyckoff held a 10-foot measuring stick as Haney, Reid and Adams surveyed the trees, looking for fullness and color and checking the needles.
When they saw one they liked, Wyckoff tagged it with a ribbon.
“How do you get them so good-looking?” Reid asked.
“Constant care,” Wyckoff replied.
Haney was asked what goes into the perfect White House Christmas tree.
“The fullness, the color,” he said. “You have to be able to work into the tree — to be able to work from the truck out, decorating and putting lights on the tree. The shape.”
Haney said the White House didn’t have a specific number yet for how many trees will grace 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was initially thought that an 18.5-foot tall blue spruce from the farm, a tree John Wyckoff said was “virtually flawless,” would be used in the White House Blue Room. But he said it remains up in the air because the White House has extremely specific parameters for that tree. To allow the large tree to fit in the Blue Room, a crystal chandelier has to be removed.
Trees are sometimes dedicated to military members and have themes such as “Reflect, Rejoice, Renew” and “A Season of Merriment and Melody.”
“The first Christmas tree farm was started in New Jersey, in the Trenton area, and it’s sort of like a culmination now to have the trees selected to go into the White House,” Agriculture Secretary Fisher said. “It’s pretty cool.”
Wyckoff, whose farm has nine species of Christmas trees, said factors that go into making the perfect tree include proper fertilization and shearing technique.
He called it “an honor” to be able to deliver and present trees to the White House.
“I can only hope they’re enjoyed in the White House as much as we enjoy growing them and presenting them,” Wyckoff said, noting that the trees selected by the White House will be harvested and likely be transported from his 174-year-old farm to the White House the day after Thanksgiving.
So, surely he and his wife, Leslie, must be especially picky about their own family Christmas tree, right?
“We end up taking the tree that’s left — the one that’s at the far end of the field that nobody walked to, that’s sufficient enough and large enough for our 11-foot ceilings,” John Wyckoff said with a shrug. “When you decorate ‘em, they’re all beautiful.”