LEXINGTON, S.C. — It's nearly time for families to go out and choose a real Christmas tree to decorate their homes for the holidays. But some Christmas tree farms in the Midlands were hit hard by Hurricane Helene.
One of those farms was Price's Christmas Tree Farm in Lexington. The owner, Bryan Price, said about 130 of his trees drowned, according to the Clemson Extension and Forestry Service.
He said this was after his farm received about 20 inches of rain within a two-week period.
Price said he hauled off piles of debris, tree limbs, and branches and pushed some piles up by the edge of the woods on his property. He added that while he saw a lot of damage, farms in western North Carolina saw worse.
"The winds from Helene had probably close to 7-800 trees that were leaning with the wind. They literally had holes around the trunks where the wind was just wringing ‘em round and around and around," Price said. "Some of them were laying on the ground, which I couldn’t salvage, and then some were just leaning over, which I went beside them and stood ‘em up and then tried to stomp the ground back in around ‘em."
Price said his farm is expecting to get some Fraser firs on Tuesday.
"We’ve had a lot of loss from the storms, and a lot of extra labor went into everything down here, but we’re going to hold the line and keep prices reasonable because I know, economically, a lot of people have had a hard time," he said.
This year, the focus was cleaning up storm damage and preparing for the Christmas tree season.
South Carolina Christmas Tree Association president Allison Moses, who owns Penland Christmas Tree farm in York, South Carolina, explained the impact.
"Mostly just a lot of wind damage with trees being leaned over and, but they were able to be staked back up with stakes and bamboo stakes," Moses said. "There are some farms in South Carolina that did lose some of their big trees, but the overall picture talking to the association and different farms, everyone was very lucky."
"All the trees, honestly, it was during shaping time, so the trees were leaning, and they would just push them back over and stake them and shape the tree," she added. "So, everything was able to, in most aspects, survive."
Moses said that out of her farm's 30,000 trees, they had lost about 6,000. She said, on average, South Carolina farms saw damage to about 100 to 400 trees post-Hurricane Helene.
"Every farm probably had damage, but to the extent of everything was salvageable," Moses said.
The South Carolina Christmas Tree Association president said that despite the damage, she doesn't expect Christmas tree farms to increase prices this holiday season.
Many of these farms said they will start selling their trees next weekend.
