Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 18, 1994 TAG: 9406200114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WHITETOP NOTE: BELOW LENGTH: Long
Even worse, it could wipe out the livelihood of many of the farmers if they don't get some relief.
``It smelled just like they'd been on fire,'' grower Jay Baldwin said, pointing out trees with brown spots among their greenery. ``You could walk through here and smell the burn.''
The devastation spilled over into Smyth and Washington counties, although growers in Floyd County seem to have escaped it.
``We had no forecast of bad weather that night. Nobody realized it,'' Baldwin said. Even if they had, there was no way they could have covered 2,400 acres of trees with burlap to protect them.
It takes 12 to 15 years to grow a tree to marketable size, and involves several transplantings as they go from one stage to the next. ``We're talking about a lot of years invested, and it's wiped out in just a few hours,'' Baldwin said. ``It has put a lot of folks in jeopardy of going under.''
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, is seeking a disaster declaration for Grayson, Smyth and Washington counties from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and low-interest loans for replanting and reseeding from the Farmers Home Administration.
``The freeze occurred at a time when Fraser firs are at their most fragile period of growth, and the resulting damage was devastating,'' Boucher told Gov. George Allen in a letter seeking his support of the initiatives.
``The loss in Grayson County, where the preponderance of Fraser firs are grown, exceeds $11 million, and losses for growers in Washington and Smyth counties total approximately $300,000 in each county," Boucher wrote.
Even the two ice storms in February did not do as much damage to the Christmas trees, because they were not vulnerable in their growth cycle then.
``Although the May disaster occurred in a much smaller geographic area than the ice storms, it will have a greater economic effect on the growers and on the localities,'' Boucher wrote.
Ken Sexton, president of the Mount Rogers Area Christmas Tree Growers Association, which has about 100 members, said 40 percent of trees growing in fields covering 960 acres were lost.
Seedlings suffered even greater damages, threatening Fraser fir availability at Christmases years into the future.
Sexton said 60 percent of the seedlings in seedbeds were wiped out, and 70 percent of those in lineout beds. There is nothing to do with them but plow them under, he said.
``The Christmas tree industry is the only industry we have in the western end of Grayson County,'' he said. ``In fact, 85 percent of the farm income in the Wilson District of Grayson County, where the preponderance of the damage occurred, is derived from Christmas trees.''
Fraser firs grow only in higher elevations, and Grayson County has the highest in Virginia - Mount Rogers, the state's tallest mountain, and Whitetop, the second tallest. The farmers collect seed for the firs from Mount Rogers.
The unique elevation and climate conditions make the region ideal for growing the Fraser firs, and the industry expanded in the past 15 years, with both part-time and full-time Christmas tree growers.
``Most of us have put the better part of our adult lives into this,'' said Baldwin, who started growing in 1975. Sexton followed in his father's footsteps as a grower. Buryl Greer had just brought his sons into the industry.
``This was going to be their first year of selling,'' Greer said. ``Some of us run tree lots. So we're going to have to come up with trees. We're going to have to buy them from our neighbors.''
Greer has three lots in Northern Virginia where he sells trees each year. ``Up there, there's a lot on every corner.''
A drive along U.S. 58 through the Whitetop community and surrounding area yields vistas of triangular-shaped firs covering fields and hills, and those are just a fraction of what was being grown. ``The biggest parts are off the road and back from where you don't see,'' Greer said.
The disaster has brought researchers from neighboring North Carolina, which also grows Christmas trees, to see if any of the larger trees can be salvaged.
Ribbons of different colors mark rows of mature trees being treated in different ways, from severe pruning to just seeing what Mother Nature will do unaided. It will be years before researchers can tell how effective any of the treatments are.
``We thought this would be a good opportunity to just come in and try a different number of pruning treatments, because there's a chance that, if it happened in one place, it can happen again,'' said Eric Hinesley, with the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
``I've seen some frost damage, but I've never seen anything quite like this,'' he said. ``I just regret that we don't know exactly what to tell people ... Maybe we can learn something.''
Jim Carey, extension agent from Ashe County, N.C., also visited the area because ``your problems this year may be our problems next year.''
Carey walked through one of the fields where the tops of trees are browned and 2 feet shorter than they normally would have been by now.
``In another 20 days, we'd have been up to here and this tree would have been marketable,'' he said, holding his hand a couple of feet above the burned tip of a tree. ``But you can't recover growth ... They were counting on selling these trees this year, and now they're not going to be sold for another two years at the earliest. That hurts.''
by CNB