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a hill. The tree might have been glorified with tinsel and angels next December had it not fallen victim to last winter’s ice storms. “The ice is giving them a fit,” he said, trying to push some crooked trees back up straight.
This tree had cracked in half right in the middle. Some honeysuckle had squeezed and weakened the trunk first, making the tree an easy prey to the storm, McWhirt noted. “Honeysuckle is a Christmas tree grower’s worst enemy,” he added, “You pull them out twice a year pertineer. You fight them like a son of a gun!”
Sometimes the farmers don’t know quite what hit. The trees just turn yellow and die. He points to one pale little pine. “Sometimes they never amount to anything — you can fertilize or whatever.”
Other assorted disasters can befall a future Christmas tree, McWhirt adds. Sometimes the deer gather among the trees and the bucks scrape their antlers against the bark, leaving great bare spots, other times McWhirt himself is the enemy, bumping into the trees with his mower.
For all these reasons and to replace those trees which actually ended up in living
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