Grant Christmas Tree Farm suffers loss of trees in the aftermath of hurricanes

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) -With the end of thanksgiving comes the most wonderful time of the year, and for many an annual tradition of picking out their Christmas tree. At Grant Christmas Tree Farm though, it hasn’t been the easiest year.

“We were having a good growing season, the trees were doing really well,” said Gray Anderson, owner, and operator. “I was excited about our crop, probably one of the best crops I’ve raised since ’89 when Molly and I bought the business.”

Anderson explained the hurricanes did more damage than anticipated.

“We sustained a lot of root damage with that storm, we ended up cutting probably around 400 trees from root damage,” Anderson said. “They probably didn’t have enough time for the roots to heal from the storm. We still have a few that are still dying from root damage.”

It also affected the number of trees they usually sell.

“You know I have about 10,000 on the farm,” Anderson said. “So, I mean, out of the 10,000, that would’ve been mostly bigger trees, that would’ve been my sales trees that I lost. So, but we still tagged over 3 thousand trees to sell this year.”

Even the trees they outsource from North Carolina didn’t have a good year.

“It did affect me, I bought less trees this year than I usually do, and the quality is not as good as it usually is and the price went up because of the demand.”

But even though it’s been a rough year, Anderson says they’re still here, with plenty of trees to sell.

“We’ve been through several hurricanes, and even Gustav and Ike back-to-back several years ago, I sustained a fair amount of damage from them, but this is by far the worst death, loss that we’ve ever had,” Anderson said. “We’re still here, we’re open for business, we want to have a little bit of normal in this crazy year.”

Grant Christmas Tree Farm is open until 5 p.m. every day until December 20. They do open late on Sundays.

For more information on hours of operation and location, click HERE.

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