ST. JOSEPH COUNTY — After Thursday, all attention turns to the countdown to Christmas.

Thanksgiving weekend is often spent putting up Christmas trees and decorations. Many farms are ready.

Peter O’Neil and his wife decided Wednesday to beat the crowds of shoppers looking for that perfect tree.

“We had an opportunity to come out and get a Christmas tree and probably going to decorate it this weekend,” O’Neil said. “So we’re trying to get a little bit of an early start on it.”

They paid a visit to the Eby Evergreen lot near Bristol.

Jeff Alexander oversees the tree lot at Eby Evergreen tree lot. They have been preparing for national and local sales.

“We’re loading a semi to go to Washington D.C. now. It’s our last semi of the year and we’re expecting a big weekend,” Alexander said. “It will be a big weekend. The following weekend we’re expecting a bigger crowd.”

It is much the same for Wilfong's Christmas Tree Haven in Goshen. They are expecting this year’s crowd may be downsizing when it comes to picking out their trees.

“With the economy the way it is, people usually still get a tree, maybe they may not get a big one,” Kim Wilfong said of Wilfong's Christmas Tree Haven.

He plans to keep his prices down as he has in years past, knowing that money will be tight for some area families due to the economy, even though growers in general have had to deal with higher costs to grow them.

“We haven’t raised our prices in at least four or five years now,” Wilfong said.

“We haven’t raised our prices in almost four years,” Alexander said. “The labor doesn’t get any cheaper and you know my basic material costs have gone up. Also, but we’re trying to keep the prices, you know, affordable for everyone.”

The Eby Evergreen farm in Bristol has a lot of trees. Roughly 800,000 of them are in the ground. They plant about 65,000 every year.