A Christmas Tree Thrives On Farms, Struggles In The Wild
The Fraser fir is found in a lot of homes around Christmas. But its wild cousins have been in decline for almost a century because of a small invasive pest.
On the first day of cutting at Joey Clawson's Christmas tree farm, in the mountains outside Boone, N.C., four workers picked their way through Fraser firs planted in neat rows. It took just a few seconds to chainsaw each tree, which Clawson had spent years pampering.
He has about 95,000 trees in the ground, of various sizes and ages. For nearly a decade before harvest, workers fertilize individual trees by hand, shape them one by one with giant machetes, and, if needed, help them fight pests.
