Far away from paved roads in the Appalachian highlands of western North Carolina, a bulldozer pulls a huge flatbed truck trailer over rutted, muddy roads. The trailer is loaded with freshly dug balled trees. It may be the rainy season, but it's also tree harvesting time on the Gragg brothers tree farm. Rain or shine, these trees will be delivered on time.
Tree farms provide over half the agricultural income in Caldwell County, North Carolina.
That's where the Gragg brothers, Chad, Chris, and Neal, grow 400 acres of trees that will go to landscapers in New England, the Middle Atlantic states, the Midwestern states, and as far west as Denver, Colorado. It's a multi-generational effort for the Graggs. The family has been growing trees ever since, except for a brief hitch during the Great Depression in the 1930s when grandfather Gragg started growing corn because the market for trees had disappeared. But the market for corn wasn't much better, and the family switched back to trees for keeps. What the Graggs farm best is trees.