NC farms selling Christmas trees that survived Helene’s wrath. They have a story to tell
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Western NC Christmas Trees
Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina and left many Christmas tree farms scrambling or behind on production. Now the region’s tree farmers are ready to tell their stories, with many inviting visitors to make holiday memories at their farms while cutting down their own trees.
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Lacey Costner didn’t have to compare a bunch of trees at David Pittman’s Christmas Tree Farm to know which would be taking a place of honor in her house this year.
“That’s my tree,” she said, flashing a picture of the Fraser fir she had on her phone.
In the photo, the tree was still in the field, hanging on by its roots after one of about a dozen landslides triggered by Tropical Storm Helene’s rain collapsed the slope where it stood on Sept. 27. Even with many of its roots exposed, the tree stood tall and green nearly two months after having the dirt pulled out from around it.
“She’s still living,” Costner said proudly. “And I want to give her a proper Christmas.”
It was opening day for “choose and cut” at Pittman’s farm, and Costner, a friend of the family, had come from her home in Linville to help out. But she had been helping already, posting photos and videos of the farm on social media since Helene came through.
In the process, Costner inadvertently created a new product for the Pittmans to sell.
“Survivor trees,” she called them, and the notion caught on. “They have a story to tell.”
Several customers have asked to buy trees that made it through the storm but aren’t likely to survive to another season.
“If people want to buy those, that’s great with me,” David Pittman said, stopping his tractor in front of Costner’s tree.
‘That hurt. That really hurt’
Pittman lost hundreds of trees, most of them in one huge landslide in a field that included about 75 of his biggest, oldest, most valuable.
“That hurt. That really hurt,” he said, and not just because he had been nurturing those trees for 20 years or more. His financial loss is likely to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
North Carolina is the country’s second-largest producer of Christmas trees, most of them Fraser firs grown in the western counties hardest-hit by Helene. In 2022, North Carolina had 940 Christmas tree growers, and while many of them had some Helene damage, farms are shipping out their wholesale orders, and those that do choose-and-cut sales are welcoming customers.
Industry officials haven’t offered estimates on Christmas tree losses, which happened as a result of landslides, flooding and extreme wind from the storm. But Christmas trees aren’t covered by regular crop insurance, and most N.C. tree growers don’t buy into the federal Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, a catastrophic type of coverage that only pays when losses exceed 50% of a grower’s average yield.
A way to help local families, too
But mountain folk, and especially farmers, are a resourceful bunch.
“We’ll salvage what we can,” Sawyer Avery said as he walked through a field at Trinity Tree Farms, along the Toe River a few miles from Pittman’s place. When the river came up during the storm, the fast-moving water was 4 or 5 feet deep as it ran through a stand of thousands of trees. It pushed smaller ones to the ground, and twisted larger ones and left them wrapped in debris.
Avery said crews would cut off any branches that hadn’t been in the water and use those to make wreaths. Intact treetops could be snipped and sold as tabletop trees, he said. Those are available for shipping.
Customers, too, have sought creative ways to support tree farmers and others in Western North Carolina who have lost so much.
More than a dozen people have reached out to Sugar Grove Nursery, also near Newland in Avery County, and asked if they could buy trees they’ll never receive.
“They want to pay for a tree and have us give it to somebody in the community who can’t afford to buy one,” Kayla Wilcox said.
Wilcox and her siblings work in the trees to help their dad, who took over the farm his father had started in the 1960s. Sugar Grove doesn’t ship trees or do wholesale, only choose and cut. About 500 families find their way to the farm and pick out a tree here every year.
A few of Sugar Grove’s fields are inaccessible this year and dozens of trees are gone as a result of several landslides on the farm from Helene. From the front porch of her house, near the top of a hill on the farm, Wilcox can see the landslides’ scars on a facing slope.
“We’re resilient,” she said. “We’ll be OK. But it’s so nice that people want to help. It’s humbling. I cry every day.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "NC farms selling Christmas trees that survived Helene’s wrath. They have a story to tell."
