A mudslide toppled thousands of trees on a farm in Newland, North Carolina. Hurricane Helene ravaged the area in September. But this 20-foot Fraser fir stood firm. Workers cut it down, lifted it with a crane, and placed it on a truck bound for the nation’s capital city.
Merry Christmas to the White House!
The hurricane hit Avery County in North Carolina hard. Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm lost about 6,000 smaller trees.
Sam Cartner, Jr., is one of three brothers who own the farm. They had known since last year that one of their Christmas trees would go to the White House. But after the storm, they felt even more honored.
“We wanted to really be an uplifting symbol for the other farmers and other people in Western North Carolina that have experienced so many losses,” he says.
Damaged roads delayed White House staff members’ planned visit to the farm. They were finally able to make the trek in late October.
Their festive fir choice had a “wonderful verdant color,” short limbs, and met size requirements for display. The Tannenbaum is about 25 years old and weighs between 400 to 500 pounds.
Staff adorned the tree with a huge red, white, and blue ribbon before loading it on a truck.
North Carolina is the second largest producer of Christmas trees in the country. About 96% of the state’s holiday trees grow in the western region. Farmers there harvest between four and five million Christmas trees each year.
Jennifer Greene is the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association’s executive director. Despite tree losses on some farms, Greene says farmers across the region persevere. She doesn’t expect Helene’s damage to drastically affect this year’s harvest. But it may cause trouble in future seasons, since farmers lost many young trees.
Sam Cartner’s parents founded their farm in 1959. It started small. They raised cows, cabbages, and beans alongside the Fraser firs, Cartner says. Early on, family members planted their trees on the steepest field because they didn’t want to use up their best land for them. The farm grew over the years to about 500 planted acres.
On November 25, two Clydesdale horses pulled the Cartners’ fir in a green wagon up the White House driveway. First Lady Jill Biden and guests accepted the tree from the Cartner family while a brass band played “O Christmas Tree.”
White House officials announced that the Cartners named the tree “Treemendous” to “represent everything good about humanity, about faith, hope, and love.”
Volunteers decorated the tree in the White House’s Blue Room, which is a center for holiday parties.
The Charlotte Observer reports that former President Franklin Pierce brought the first Christmas tree into the White House in 1853. The National Christmas Tree Association started the tradition of having its annual grand champion grower give a tree to the first lady for the Blue Room in 1966.
