Can a Family Resurrect the American Chestnut Tree in Appalachia?

[P]rovided food for both people and animals and wood for cabins and fence posts. In cash-poor regions, the tree could even put some money in people’s pockets when they sold nuts to brokers to take to the cities of the Northeast. Some joked that the tree could take you from the cradle to the grave, as the wood was used to make both furniture for babies and caskets. It was certainly “the most useful tree.”

Yet a blight first recognized in New York in 1904 virtually destroyed the species by mid-century. Beyond its direct human impacts, Crawford writes, “This loss had enormous ecological impacts on the forests of the eastern United States and contributed to a decline in the population of many species of wildlife, including turkeys, bears, and squirrels.”

Restoration efforts began under the auspices of the American Chestnut Foundation, which started publishing a journal in 1985. As Crawford writes, “One of the most significant sections of the journal in its early years was the ‘Memories’ section, which documented ‘chestnut stories.’ ” As a genre, these stories can take many forms, she notes, from oral histories to essays and poems, “but they all document the relationship between humankind and the American chestnut tree. Chestnut stories serve an important purpose: reminding people of the value of the species and the many ways people used the tree before its decline.”

Today, the Joyce family, Fraser fir Christmas tree farmers in southwest Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands, are among those hoping to write a new kind of Chestnut story—a success story of restoration and renewal. Whether they ultimately succeed or not, stories like theirs promise to bear lasting fruit, nurtured by the kinds of stories Crawford describes. The family has planted saplings from a seemingly blight-resistant grove, though the American Chestnut Foundation warned via email that “At this time there is no fully blight-resistant American chestnut,” adding that they couldn’t comment directly on these particular trees.

The Joyce’s farm, with a mailing address in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, straddles the border with North Carolina where their roots lie. “We’re just like 5 miles from Grayson Highlands State Park, it butts into Jefferson National Forest, so the area we live in is a very is a very mountainous, forested region,” says Felicia Joyce. Though not native to area, it’s fair to call it the land of their dreams.

“Neither my husband nor I, neither of us grew up on a farm, but we both had family members who farmed,” Felicia says. “We didn’t know each other growing up, but both of us were passionate about farming and knew that we wanted to farm.” She and her husband, Jason, both attended North Carolina State University where they majored in agriculture. “That’s where we met,” she says. “As soon as we graduated, we got married and moved to where we are now.”

Today, with their five children, Felicia says that their Christmas tree farm, which includes a wreath making production, is a family effort. Four of the children work on the farm, while the oldest, Franklin, returns during the busiest seasons. “We all participate in the farm, and do all of the work ourselves.”

As a collector of chestnut stories over her lifetime, Felicia says that “by all accounts of the old-timers they were magnificent trees that just dominated the forests of the South, and they were also really important for wood products and timber, because they grew so fast.”

Her husband Jason was the first to personally encounter a chestnut tree—or at least the remnant of one. He grew up in Winston-Salem, in the Piedmont of North Carolina. “I had some crazy idea that I wanted to farm since I was a little fella,” he says. His uncle, who began Christmas tree farming in the 1970s, was the only farmer he knew, and Jason began working summers for him at the age of 12. He vividly remembers how he and his uncle “would go walking in the woods, and he would show me the stumps of the chestnut tree. Of course, when you’re 12 or 13, a lot of that doesn’t sink in, but the fact that there was some massive trees that were all just a tremendous part of the culture where we lived, did resonate,” he says.

At the time, he had no thought of renewal. “You know the blight killed them. That was a shame. I hated it. It would have been great to have seen [the trees],” when they were alive, he says. Little did he dream that that almost 40 years later he would have a chance to play a part in possibly reviving the lost giants of the land on which he lived.

Felicia never saw a chestnut stump herself, but the stories were part of her environment. “In addition to farming we’re all kind of outdoorsmen, so we really enjoy being outside,” she says. “Everybody in our family hunts, and we like to hike, and I have actually home-schooled all five of our children for their primary education all the way through high school, and we always did a lot of nature study, and so we spent a lot of time outside.”

The interest and respect for the natural environment she instilled in the lessons she taught her children eventually paid off. “Five years ago or so my older son [Franklin] and I both ran across an article about this grove of blight-resistant American chestnuts that were in the northern part of the country,” Felicia says. “And we were like, ‘Oh, wow. Well, that’s interesting,’ and then we didn’t really do anything else about it.”

But Franklin kept thinking about it. “The idea of planting chestnut trees on the farm has floated around my head for several years now,” he says. “I spent time in and around trees when I was growing up, and it never fails to strike me with a sense of loss when I see the pictures of Appalachian folks standing among the old-growth chestnut trees. The largest hardwoods we had on the farm seemed like saplings in comparison.”

Still, he says, “I had never seriously considered trying to replant chestnuts until I was in college and my family was discussing the replacement of one of the large maples in our front yard, which had fallen.” He soon found American Chestnut Restoration, a group that says that it has developed a genetically modified blight-resistant strain of the American chestnut. Because their chestnuts are bio-engineered to produce an enzyme that protects against blight, seeds from the group have to be certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as safe.

The group, in partnership with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), has also been at the center of controversy in the tree world. In 2023, an independent scientist discovered that genetically modified seeds promoted by ESF scientists were mislabeled versions of an earlier genetic version of the tree that were found to grow stunted and unhealthily. The group has since fallen out with American Chestnut Foundation, who withdrew their support to instead focus on its longstanding efforts to create a hybrid version of the American chestnut with the blight resistant Chinese chestnut, in order to breed a tree as genetically close to the American species as possible.

“While the idea of replanting chestnuts stuck in my head, I didn’t seriously consider it again until last Christmas, when I was trying to think of a gift for my mother,” Franklin says.

“I am kind of a difficult person to buy presents for,” Felicia confesses. “I am ridiculously practical, and so my children just find it very hard to get something for me that I’ll really appreciate and like.”

Franklin is more charitable. “My mother is delightful and difficult to buy a surprise gift for, so I always spend a bit of time thinking about something unexpected I could buy her,” he says. “The idea of finding chestnut seedlings came back to me. I think the return of my interest was in large part due to my family’s recent experience of loss, as my grandfather passed away last August.”

After some further research, he found a link to Chief River Nursery in Grafton, Wisconsin. “According to their website, Chief River acquires their seedlings from an old standing chestnut grove that somehow survived the blight and, for unknown reasons, seemed to be blight resistant,” he says. “I figured it was worth a shot.”

And so, “My oldest son surprised me with a letter, and he had bought me American chestnut seedlings,” Felicia says, which made her “very excited.” “My husband and I we both have a science background, so we like to experiment and we’re like, ‘Yeah we’re just going to try this.’ ”

“I was probably as excited about her gift as she was,” Jason says. “I was just really excited for the opportunity to perhaps get something started in southwest Virginia and northwest North Carolina that was a rich part of the culture and history of 100 years ago going again.”

“Our dream is that we would start the re-population of the American chestnut in the South,” Felicia says. “That would be an amazing legacy to leave for our children and grandchildren.”

In late May, when Felicia and Franklin went to pick up their five seedlings, “the lady working in the office of the nursery had a panic attack, because she was like, ‘Your coming to pick up trees and you don’t even know where you’re going to plant ‘em yet?’ ” Felicia recalls with a laugh. “We’re kind of experiential learners. We tend to jump into things by the seat of our pants and then learn as we go.”

In fact, it’s all an experiment at this point. Because the grove of trees where their seedlings were harvested from is not genetically engineered, Felicia cautions that they aren’t guaranteed to be blight resistant. “But for this particular grove of American chestnut, no tree in there has ever developed blight. So what they think is that this grove has some kind of naturally occurring genetic quality that makes it resistant to the blight. So it really is an experiment.”

So far, it’s going well. The location decision at the family’s farm was guided by three considerations. First, “We wanted to put them somewhere that was clear because we wanted to make sure they got plenty of sunlight” Felicia says. In addition, “The chestnuts had to go into places that we weren’t actively planning on planting Christmas trees.” So they planted two in one location and three in another, close enough for the trees to pollinate.

“They were about 3 foot tall when we planted them. And we got special tree stakes so the deer wouldn’t eat them,” Felicia says. Since then, she says the trees have grown above their five-foot guards and are doing well.  “We’re actually hoping next year to buy additional chestnuts and plant them on another property that we have that’s just like a mile from where are our primary farm is.”

Jason’s also planning ahead. “If we can get trees established on one 40 acres and then some established on 40 acres a mile down the road, to me it seems like almost a perfect opportunity to cross pollinate and get some trees established in between,” he says. “It would just be a neat thing for my grandkids, Felicia and my grandkids to possibly one day see the American chestnut the way that it was 100 years ago.”

For Franklin, who will be entering the University of Chicago Ph.D. program in theology this fall, the trees symbolize a deeper rootedness in existence itself. “In thinking about planting the chestnuts, I had in mind Rev. 22:1-5, where John the Revelator is shown the tree of life in New Jerusalem. For my family and I, that tree stands as a promise of loss redeemed—it stands as a sign of Christ’s faithfulness to return our stripped and barren land to new and bountiful life,” he says.

“As we experience the loss of my grandfather, I hope the chestnut trees will become symbols of the tree of life on our farm, instantiating the promise that what has been irrevocably lost can still yet return to the land.”

Tree farming profoundly informs the Joyce family’s perspective. “Although you harvest trees annually, it’s not an annual crop, and so it is a very different way of thinking about what you’re doing, because every investment that you make is a long-term investment and every harvest that you have is a harvest of many years.” Felicia says.

“We’ve always been in the long game,” Jason says. “Christmas trees in itself is our income as a farm, it’s an eight-year process, and so the long game isn’t new to us.” he said.

Where the Joyce family’s story will fit into the public history of trees going forward is yet to be seen. Success isn’t guaranteed—in farming it never is, any more than in science. But the effort and intention in creating the possibility for renewal give the Joyce family a success to be cherished in itself—a chestnut story of their own.

Says Felicia:

The thought that I may never even see the results of this, that’s exciting and thrilling, and what a gift we would have given our children and grandchildren if some of these trees make it. It just reinforces that lesson that’s kind of already a part of our life—that it’s good to do small things. I guess some people would be like, “Well, five trees,” but I guess we’ve always felt like small things make a big difference.

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Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer. He's been a columnist for Al Jazeera English and Salon.com, and has written for dozens of daily and weekly papers including the Des Moines Register, the Dallas Morning News and the Christian Science Monitor. He is senior editor at Random Lengths News, an alternative biweekly based in San Pedro, California.