00:00Well, how does weather extremes play into Christmas tree growing, especially when you
00:04talk about the different ages in their life as we try to get to that mature tree?
00:10Yeah, so on average, after you put a seedling in the ground, you're looking at six to eight years,
00:17sometimes as much as nine or ten, to get a tree up to the six, seven, eight foot,
00:22that's the common height most people want their Christmas tree. It can take a number of years to
00:26get it that tall. And so the trees that are most susceptible to weather extremes, whether it's
00:33dry weather or really wet weather, of course, the small trees, the seedlings, when they're first put
00:37in the ground, by the time they get to about four or five years old and they get up to four or five
00:41feet tall, the root systems become really well established. They have a deep taproot. They're
00:47less susceptible to seasonal weather patterns, but they can still be damaged. The growth can be
00:52slowed down. So as growers, you're always trying to think seven, eight, nine years ahead. If you have
00:57high mortality, if you have a lot of seedlings that are killed by extreme weather, then you have to
01:02plant more in the next year and try to make up that inventory in your crop growing in your fields.
01:07Stressful job for sure. All right, we know that there are so many states across the country that
01:12grow Christmas trees. We want to focus on the weather recovery in North Carolina, especially
01:15after Hurricane Helene here. Can you speak at all about any improvements for growers in that key
01:22region? Yeah, so most of the damage that Helene did was really to infrastructure. So it just made
01:32the operations much more difficult. Most of what I heard from the growers, they did have some loss of
01:38trees, but it wasn't as bad. A lot of those trees are grown on very steep hillsides. So it was really the
01:44infrastructure. It was the roads. If your farm road gets taken out, if a bridge gets taken out,
01:49it was really difficult for them to get trees harvested and off to market. From what I've
01:55been hearing, most of that recovery has been able to happen so far this year. And I think everybody
02:00I'm talking to from North Carolina thinks they're going to have no issues getting their trees harvested
02:05into market this year. Amazing. Rick Dungy, Executive Director of the National Christmas Tree
02:10Association. Thank you for joining us.
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