Construction on the Christmas Shoppe allowed for the family business to greatly expand!
the garage, they constantly got needles stuck to their shoes and they followed you right into the house. Another change was need- ed to keep family peace, so a new building was built in 2002. It was a 5,000 square-foot building with two levels shaped to look like an antique barn in which the wreaths were made. But to pay for this building, they needed something more - so in came ornaments! They were able to purchase about 1,000 ornaments the first year and actually displayed many of those on a real blue spruce Christ- mas tree in the new building. Customers were very happy with the new look of the farm and the choose-and-cut started to take off. Stan continued to cut and haul trees to the Northumberland lot and spent many hours working there. In 2003, the Kohls started finding Christmas shows to go to and began purchasing even more ornaments. They still only had the first floor of the Christmas shop ready for customers and needed more space. They purchased about 4,000 ornaments by Christ- mastime in 2003. In 2004 they got the second floor of the Christ- mas shop ready to use and expanded the inventory into three quarters of the second floor while using a small room upstairs mainly for storage. They continue to expand their inventory and purchased more fake trees for ornament displays. The customers enjoyed the ornaments better and the fact that they could be sep- arated by category was a big help. The farm’s philosophy, which continues today, is that they are constantly adding more catego- ries and more varieties of ornaments. With the farm being a bit out of the way, along a back country road, they want to make it worthwhile for customers to come to shop at their Christmas shop. During the Christmas season of 2005, Stan’s father passed away from cancer. This was a huge setback for the farm in that he helped with many of the tasks like going to the Lewisburg Farm- er’s Market and manning the stand in Northumberland. He had been very instrumental in helping do a lot of the construction on the Christmas shop as well. Three years later, it became appar- ent that Stan was not going to be able to maintain both the lot in Northumberland and continue to grow his customer base at his farm near Washingtonville. Because of this, the 2008 season marked the last season to have trees in Northumberland. Folks still tell Stan how much his father and grandfather would help them, and how they really enjoyed going to the Northumberland lot.
Once he gave up the lot in Northumberland, he had more time to focus on expanding what was going on at the home farm. He continued building an inventory of pre-cut trees, turning it into one of the biggest selections around. People could either pick through the pre-cut trees or go into the field to pick and cut their own tree as a family, and enjoy the whole experience. This was when the choose-and-cut really took off. By 2010, the inventory in the Christmas shop had grown so much that they had to clear out the storeroom upstairs and make that into a showroom, and it did not take long to fill that. By 2012 the inventory was over 30,000 ornaments and a need to expand again arose. They added an additional 7,000 ft. to the Christmas shop which allowed them to greatly increase inventory, add custom- er bathrooms, and ramp access to the second floor for handicap accessibility. They attended different Christmas shows including Philadelphia and Atlanta to purchase ornaments. This was done in the winter- time shortly after Christmas and then the ornaments they pur- chased would be shipped to the farm starting in May or June.
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