By Chris Burritt for BusinessNC
As they’ve done for many years, western North Carolina’s Christmas tree farmers are starting to ship millions of Fraser firs across the U.S. and prepare for families visiting their choose-and-cut lots in the mountains.
Beyond the holidays, however, damage from Tropical Storm Helene has created uncertainty for some of the state’s 940 tree growers. Among them are Dee Clark, a third-generation farmer in Newland.
“We’re trying to actually figure out how to carry on from here with the farm,” says Clark, 62, who raises trees on about 400 acres in Burke, Caldwell and Avery counties and, just across the Tennessee line, in Johnson County. “It’s something my family’s built up over the years, and we’re trying our hardest to figure out a way for it to survive after this.”
Farmers such as Clark, of C&G Nursery, have yet to assess the cost of damages. However, they believe them to be potentially devastating due to a lack of flood insurance to cover losses of Christmas trees, seedlings and other landscaping stock, farm equipment and buildings.
Damage to roads was widespread, from farm roads traversed by crews to reach Christmas trees to Interstate 40, U.S. 421 and other major thoroughfares. In some areas, motorists headed to tree farms are going to encounter delays due to detours around blocked roads.
“Helene hit a month before the start of harvest season,” said Jennifer Greene, executive director of the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, based in Boone. “That was even more stressful for farmers because they’re on a deadline to get those fixed because they’ve got to have access to their farms.”
Ranking behind Oregon, North Carolina accounts for nearly a quarter of Christmas trees produced in the U.S. That translates into a harvest of 3.2 million trees annually, producing sales of more than $144 million, based on the latest information from 2022, according to the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association. Growers raise about 53 million trees on more than 33,000 acres.
Not all farms suffered the severity of damage that hit C&G Nursery, which had to rebuild most of its gravel and dirt roads and replace drainage culverts before workers could start cutting trees. Some other farms were basically wiped out, said Clark, who serves as the association’s treasurer.
“It depends on where you were located,” he said. “For some, it was just an inconvenience. Some may have lost everything they had.”
A landslide stopped at the backdoor of one of Clark’s employees. “It swept his neighbors’ home away and killed both of them,” he said. “And one of his neighbors has yet to be found. She’s still listed under the missing.”
“Every farmer has their own story and their own set of circumstances, but overall, the industry itself and the Christmas trees fared well,” Greene said.
Many trees grow on hillsides, protecting them from flooding. In anticipation of Helene’s arrival in late September, Clark said workers moved tractors and other farm equipment about 100 yards higher than the high-water mark from previous flooding. “We still had equipment get flooded,” he said.
This coming weekend, C&G Nursery is going to be ready for the opening of its choose-and cut stand in Pineola, Clark said. Looking ahead, he said, the survival of his family’s business is probably going to require downsizing and reorganizing, steps Clark hadn’t contemplated before Helene.
“We may have to restructure how we have always done things, which is hard when you get our age and you’ve done it a certain way your whole life and that’s how you were taught to do it,” he said. “I’m going to have to figure out a different way to do things.”
Related: Christmas trees are welcome relief after tough fall in mountains
The preceding article originally appeared on November 12, 2024 at BusinessNC’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.
