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2 weeks ago
15
The 2024 holiday season is in full swing, and as Christmas tree farmers in western North Carolina continue to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Helene, they say that customers and the local community are stepping up to support them this year.
North Carolina is the second-largest Christmas tree-producing state in the US, harvesting nearly 4m trees annually, mainly grown in the western part of the state.
Two months ago, the region was devastated by Hurricane Helene, which resulted in at least 95 deaths in the state as well as widespread damage to homes, farms, roads, land and infrastructure.
Helene caused approximately $125m in losses of ornamental nurseries and Christmas trees, as some farms in western North Carolina saw losses in trees, flooded fields, and damage to roads and equipment.
Graham Avery, a manager of Avery Farms, a 200-year-old Christmas tree farm in Avery county, said they lost between 60,000 and 80,000 of their Christmas trees to Helene.
The farm was submerged in six feet of water and the flooding caused extensive damage to the farm’s fields, structures, equipment and supplies. Avery’s parents lost their home on the property.
“It just clobbered us,” he said, adding that the flooding also contaminated the soil, which will probably cause most trees on the farm to die if they haven’t already.
For this holiday season, Avery Farms is salvaging what it can and selling a limited number of trees. It is also selling the tops of trees turned into tabletop trees, homemade wreaths and boughs.
As of early December, community support was overwhelming, Avery said, with people donating to the farm and purchasing items. Due to high demand, online orders have been paused, he said, and about 20 people are working daily to fulfill existing requests.
Not all farms in the region were hit as hard as Avery. Many Christmas trees grow at high elevations and on slopes, which can offer some protection from flooding. But even for those that didn’t have direct losses of trees, many farmers faced costs for repairs for roads, structures and equipment.
Amber Scott, one of the owners of the Cline Church Nursery in Ashe county, said that the impact of Hurricane Helene on her farm, which grows Christmas trees, was not as severe as others. Still, flooding did get into the office, garden center and barns, and affected some nursery stock trees.
Scott said they had to construct a new road, patch existing ones and clean up fields. She added that some fields might “never be the same” due to soil contamination.
“That story is repeated throughout the entire region and on a much larger scale for some growers and farmers,” she said. “There were several hill slides that took off thousands of trees at a time.
“There’s really hardly anybody living that has experienced anything like that,” Scott said of Helene. “It was really, really something.”
Scott said that while the farm mainly does wholesale orders, its clients have reported “wonderful” sales this year. Other farms and farmers in the area have also reported a boost in sales and customer support in the wake of Helene.
“I think people are excited to support in the way that they can, and one of the things they can do is buy Christmas trees,” Scott said.
Last year, a tree from Cline Church Nursery was selected as the official White House Christmas tree. And this year, the official White House Christmas tree again came from western North Carolina, this time from Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm in Newland, which lost about 6,000 trees to mudslides during Helene.
“I think it’s very special that two years in a row that White House tree has come from North Carolina,” Scott said.
Following Helene, Jennifer Greene, executive director of the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, said it would take time to fully assess the extent and implications of the damage to Christmas tree farms in the region.
Greene said that she hopes these farms will see profits this season to help alleviate the financial strain caused by the storm.
She added that people seemed eager to support western North Carolina and its Christmas tree farmers, saying: “We’re very thankful for that.”
While Christmas tree farmers in the region may see sales this year match or go above previous years, farmers like Graham Avery are worried about the long-term effects of the damage from Helene.
After this holiday season, Avery will have to bulldoze his fields, he said, and start over. And because it takes six to 12 years for Christmas trees to grow, he expects significant challenges in the coming years.
“It’ll be 10 years before we ever get the harvest out of these flooded fields again,” he said, adding that he hopes that customers will continue supporting his and other North Carolina farms in the years to come.
“Where we’re really going to be hurt is next year. And we’ll be hurting for another eight to 10 years.”
