Tim Tulloch reports in The Altamont Enterprise about one local Christmas tree farm that's not having a merry season. The Van Etten Christmas tree farm on the Berne-Altamont Road in Knox, in Albany County, is having its worst season in 50 years. The late winter's freakishly balmy temperatures started early growth before an April freeze. The summer's drought made things worse. “For the Van Etten farm,” says Lily Calderwood, commercial horticulture educator at Albany County Cornell Cooperative Extension, “it was a perfect storm.” The 15-year-old trees for sale this Christmas, the farm's Susan Mason says, survived, but the freeze snapped their “internal” needles, the ones near the trunk, making them look less full. The farm's apple trees were hit worse. “They produced not a single apple,” Mason says. Read the full story in The Altamont Enterprise.