CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — West Valley Christmas Tree Farm has been bringing their business to the Coastal Bend for the past 37 years, and they've witnessed some hard days for the industry.
"There was a bad drought about five years ago, and the trees didn't even make it. The little ones that were put out, the seedlings, a lot of them died. So there's a bubble where there is a shortage for several years. So there's more trees coming on but for the next couple of years it'll still be tight," says Vickie Smith, Owner of West Valley Christmas Trees.
Every year, they remain disciplined in the amount of trees they grow on their small 80 acre farm in Oregon, and when the drought hit, they were prepared.
"Since we're small and capable of doing it, we hand watered the trees several years in a row, just ran around in a john deer gator and watered the trees a quart of water a week just hand watering the trees...The big farms that are supplying huge quantities of trees are cut in October, and they may just not last for people and a lot of the times here they aren't holding up through Christmas." Smith says.
West Valley Christmas tree delivers over 2,600 trees from Oregon to the Coastal Bend each year. Five different trucks bring in trees during the season. and the trees that were brought in today were cut just last Wednesday
West Valley Christmas trees used to sell their trees in 8 different cities, but now they just do it in Corpus Christi at two locations - one outside of Sunrise Mall and the other in Calallen off US-77.