FOR those looking forward to waking up to the smell of fresh pine from their Christmas tree this festive season, this simple pleasure is likely to come at an extra cost in the wake of Hurricane Melissa.

Like many other farmers, those who supply Christmas trees are now contending with ruined plants and limited access to farms due to breakaways and landslides after the Category 5 weather system obliterated sections of the country mere weeks before the holiday season.

As if sounding an alarm, Louis Watson, one of the owners of Watson’s Christmas Trees — a prominent supplier that operates two farms in the cool hills of the Blue Mountains in a community called Penlyne Castle — said there will be a shortage of the Yuletide season essential this year, and in the years to come. So a Christmas tree that once went for about $2,500 per foot, based on the height of the tree, is likely to attract a higher price.

“The wind damage them, tear them apart,” said Watson. “Some of them have been uprooted, some are burnt because the breeze battered them, so they are not lush green like they normally would be.

“There will be a shortage, not with me alone, but with other farmers,” she told the Jamaica Observer when the team visited the area last Tuesday.

But the damage to the plants is just one issue facing Watson’s Christmas Trees, what is left of the road that once led to their three-acre farm is another.

“We have to take into consideration that we don’t have any roads, so for us to travel with a Christmas tree from around the farm, these men [we will have to hire to carry them] are going to charge an arm and a leg to bring a tree, and for me to pay that, it would not be profitable…The road would be right there, to come out here,” Watson said, pointing to the deteriorated route to her larger farm from the view of the half-acre farm located in her backyard.

Besides Christmas tree farms, there are also coffee, banana, plantain, and cocoa farms located beyond the deteriorated road in Penlyne Castle, so Watson said farmers are feeling the brunt of what she described as a “disaster”.

“Our livelihood have been lost. This is what we do to make a living, because we don’t have an office here, so we don’t have anything else to survive from. This is our major source, and it is coffee time now. The person I normally buy coffee from, I can’t even buy from them because there is no road to take it out [from the farm],” she explained.

According to the Christmas tree farmer, with no alternative route in the Penlyne Castle community to drive to the three-acre farm, it will take up to six hours of walking to and from their farm to transport trees, which will affect the efficiency of the business.

The Christmas tree farmer lamented that though residents are no strangers to road defects, this is the worst she has seen it.

“The roads are our major challenge over the years. We have a lot of cut-offs, currently we are unable to go through the river. Maybe after the water subsides, then we could, but it will not be like before, because the [Mahogany Vale] Bridge that was there got washed away,” she told the Sunday Observer.

To get to the Penlyne Castle community, residents utilise the St Andrew communities of Gordon Town and Mavis Bank, which normally takes about an hour. However, the impacted Mahogany Vale Bridge has left the route impassable in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, forcing residents to now travel an alternative four-hour route through Morant Bay, St Thomas.

For the Watsons, this challenge is a nightmare as their Christmas tree operation is based on delivery, which sees them supplying people in the Corporate Area and as far as Hanover.

“Most of our customers call and we deliver. I have customers who have already called saying they need their trees early this year, so they wanted us to start in November,” she said.

Highlighting that a Christmas tree takes approximately four to five years to grow and be ready, Watson told the Sunday Observer that the sector will have a gap going forward, disclosing that their anticipated output for this year has been cut in half, thanks to the devastation cause by Melissa.

In relation to their crop that was being grown for future years, she said approximated 35 per cent of those plants have been impacted.

“Some farmers Christmas trees look like fire ran through [them], they are just brown, and I don’t know when those trees will come back. In fact, I don’t think some of them will come back; they would just have to cut them out and toss them. So it’s a big impact,” she said.

WATSON…there will be a shortage, not with me alone, but with other farmers

Louis Watson, one of the owners of Watson’s Christmas Trees, pointing to trees left leaning by the winds associated with Hurricane Melissa in her backyard in Penlyne Castle.

Damaged by the wind and rain associated with Hurricane Melissa, this pine tree in Penlyne Castle is struggling to survive.

More damaged Christmas trees in the wake of Hurricane Beryl.

A section of one of Watson’s Christmas Trees farms in Penlyne Castle, showing developing plants.