BRYAN, Texas — For the past three years, Jan Peery has owned and operated the Tanglewood Christmas Tree Farm just outside of Bryan.
She works year-round growing and selling Virginia Pines to make perfect Christmas trees for the holiday season.
"In 2019 [we sold to] just to close friends to experiment, and in 2020 we opened to the public and sold about 100 trees," Peery said.
"We were very successful for our first season."
However, the success for the holidays comes from the weather in the summer.
“We sold 220 trees last year and 330 the year before." Said Peery.
Peery tells 15ABC's Chris Talley how the drought was an obstacle in keeping their trees alive.
"We lost a lot of trees — we were watering 12 hours a day starting on June 1st, until a few weeks ago when the rain started again, we were finally able to give ourselves some relief on watering the trees," Peery said.
After much work over the summer, many trees did not make it to see the fall.
"Even with the watering, we probably lost 80 percent of the seedlings we planted last January," Peery said.
"They just could not sustain the heat, and lost about 20 to 30 percent of our larger trees."
Despite a hard growing season much of her production has stayed healthy, and the farm didn't have to raise prices this season.
"We're not going to oversell, because we want to make sure there are trees available for trees next year, because we do have returning clientele that bring their family out and the kids to get the tree they want," Peery said.
The Tanglewood Christmas Tree Farm is set to open for the season on the first Friday after Thanksgiving, at 16474 Wilson Pasture Road in Bryan, Texas, 77808.