HAMSHIRE, Texas — The tree in your living room this Christmas will need to have more spirit than size.
Because of the drought in Southeast Texas, farmers are struggling to get them to grow.
The owner of M&M Christmas Tree Farm Gabe Urbina tells 12News the trees are in desperate need of hydration.
"With temperatures being over 100 degrees for a month or two mixed with no rain, our crops can handle the hot temperatures, but they need the moisture," said Urbina.
Urbina says the trees will be shorter this year due to the lack of rain.
"We won't have any 10, 11 or 12 foot trees but we should have a good selection of 6, 7 and 8," Urbina told 12News.
Urbina says normally they expect 50 inches of rain a year, which would be enough for trees to grow. But our meteorologists say this year it's only rained 27 inches.
"We had a great first flush of growth during the spring, but right now we're just in a standstill until we get some rain," Urbina said.
It's not just height being impacted. Urbina says at least 10 of the Virginia Pine trees have also died.
But taking the biggest hit, are the baby trees.
"So we planted about 1,100 and we've probably lost about 40 percent of those. The bigger trees have a more established root system and they have a tap root. While it's not enough to grow it's enough to stay alive, but the baby trees just don't have enough root system," said Urbina.
Now he's looking into an irrigation system to make sure the trees have the water they need.
"It's never been an issue up until really last year and this year. We won't go up on our prices this year just so everyone can come out and enjoy this," Urbina said.
They plan to replant all 400 of the baby trees that died this year according to Urbina. He hopes they can flourish and be ready to take home, five years from now.