BANKS (AP) — The gusher of bad economic news could work the other way for Oregon’s 1,500 or so Christmas tree farmers as more families skip the holiday trip to Grandma’s house and put up a tree of their own.

“In a down economy, people are going to want to do something nice,” said Mark Schmidlin, whose 70-acre Schmidlin Farms near Banks produces four varieties of Christmas trees.

“And what’s more enjoyable than gathering your whole family around a Christmas tree on Christmas morning?”

The season is important to Oregon, easily the nation’s top Christmas tree harvester, with 8.1 million trees and sales of $114.3 million in 2007.

Oregon’s Christmas tree harvest is more than twice that of its nearest competitor, North Carolina.

Although Schmidlin and other tree farmers won’t have concrete numbers until Dec. 26, the early signs are good. Three shiploads of Oregon trees already have left for Hawaii and the Pacific Rim, and trucks are heading south to Mexico, the state’s biggest international tree buyer.

Still ahead are deliveries to the massive California market, which last year took 44 percent of the state’s harvest.

“I think we’re going to sell everything we have available this year,” said Gayla Hansen, owner of the Hansen Tree Farm in Clackamas County.

Another plus: plummeting fuel prices, which lower costs of the helicopter harvesting favored by many growers because of speed and efficiency.

Wholesale prices have steadily declined since their 2003 peak, when a glut of trees drove prices down. Farmers have been planting fewer trees - a 27 percent drop from 2003 to 2007 - and believe they have the right balance now.

It also means cheaper distribution costs. And the slowdown in other industries means truckers will be easier to find.

“In past years, there has been a shortage of trucks. This year, there doesn’t seem to be a problem,” said John Schudel, whose 8,000-acre Holiday Tree Farm near Corvallis is the world’s largest Christmas tree-growing operation.

“I don’t think we’re going to go down anymore” in prices, said Mike Bondi, a professor of forestry at Oregon State University and agricultural extension agent for Clackamas County.

Joe Sharp, who owns the 3,800-acre Yule Tree Farms near Canby, said this season is the first in years in which wholesale prices are not lower than those of the year before.

There’s no rigorous proof that Christmas tree sales are “counter-cyclical” - rising as the overall economy declines - said Art Ayre, Oregon’s labor economist. But he said the concept makes sense.

“People do tend to stay home during recessions,” he said. “And Christmas trees are a small out-of-pocket cost that, even if people aren’t doing well, are affordable.”

Bryan Ostlund, director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association, said Christmas tree sales rose during each of the past two recessions, in 1990-91 and in 2001.