Nov 12, 2013 3 min read

Butch Ciaffoni is pining for the Christmas tree shopping season – perhaps more this year than previously.

“We’ll definitely be open for that,” said Ciaffoni, co-owner of Sherwood Nursery, where a fire early Sunday morning severely damaged the office building and storage barn off Route 19 northbound in South Strabane Township.

He said the first shipment of holiday trees will arrive Nov. 22, but he plans to have a temporary office trailer onsite ahead of that.

“We have 1,400 Christmas trees ordered.”

Ciaffoni, who owns the business with his wife, Valjean, said fire marshal Sean Jones of the state police barracks in Washington examined the site Monday and determined the blaze was accidental.

“He blamed it on a fluorescent fixture that was there when we bought the place” in the late 1980s or early ’90s,” Ciaffoni said.

The fire started in the attic of the brick and block office building, he said, and high winds caused it to spread quickly to the adjacent 16-by-24-foot Amish barn. He said South Strabane police called him about 1:30 a.m. Sunday to say “there wasn’t much left” of the structures.

“I believe it’s a total loss on the buildings,” Ciaffoni said. “That’s the way the fire department felt, but I guess the insurance company will make a final decision.”

Butch, 68, and Valjean Ciaffoni, 65, did lose inventory that was stored in the barn – Christmas, spring and summer items and Halloween leftovers. The southerly winds, however, spared the 40 bulb and burlap trees that were outside the buildings.

Until Sunday, the Ciaffonis hadn’t encountered a near-calamity in the 43 years thay had operated Sherwood Nursery. They started it in 1970 at their Cecil Township farm, and ran it there for about 20 years before relocating the business end to Washington Road. The Ciaffonis cultivate much of their merchandise year-round in 30 greenhouses on the farm.

“We grow about 25,000 mums almost every year, but this year we sold out. It was an exceptional year and a lot of it had to do with weather,” Butch said, adding that they also sell flowers April through October at a rental space in Scott Township – at the intersection of Painters Run and Bower Hill roads.

The couple and two of their three daughters – Tara Ciaffoni and Holly Gillis – tend to the nursery, which sells flowers, trees, vegetables and hanging baskets. Butch said it is open from the Easter season through Halloween, closes for two weeks for holiday season preparation, reopens until early January, then shuts again.

This next reopening will be a source of relief for the family – their business has survived. It also will be a vehicle of holiday pride for the patriarch.

“We’re probably the only nursery that can display 575 trees and you can walk around all of them,” Butch said.

He acknowledged that the addition of a trailer onsite will likely reduce the number of trees that can be displayed in the same spatial fashion.

But, he vowed, Sherwood Nursery will be back in business.