Page 23 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
‘It’s a bit rough. It’s scrawled on the back of a map in semi-darkness and I was shivering with the cold so I couldn’t hold the pen steady.’
‘Well, either you’ve invented a whole new language, or you’re fluent in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs.’ He looks up at me and then looks down at it again. ‘And cave wall paintings.’
I step closer and try to point out what I’ve drawn. ‘Look, this is the field to the left of the lane. It’s empty so has to be replanted. From the scale on the estate agent’s map, I’ve worked out that it’s about two acres. If each tree takes up a few feet each, I reckon I could get three thousand trees per acre. That’s a lot of trees. I’ve had a guess at expenditure, and I’d only need to sell a couple of hundred at £40 each to break even.’
‘Yeah, but this is in seven to ten years’ time when they’re fully grown. It doesn’t help you now.’ He thrusts the paper back at me like it’s contaminated. ‘Unless you’ve got money to burn for the next ten years, you need to concentrate on the trees you havenow.And these figures are way off. Your expenses will besomuch more than that, and to sell a tree at £40, it’s got to be aperfectspecimen. The ones you have here are far from perfect and never will be again. And it’s great that you’re already thinking about replanting, but nothing will grow crammed that tightly into a field. They’ll all get cut down by disease or destroyed by pests if you’re going to try to plant them that close together. Christmas trees need space around them. They need light and air, and room to walk between each one to shear them, and if one dies, you can remove it before whatever killed it spreads to the rest of the plot. These figures are great for someone sat in front of a computer screen, but absolutely useless in the real world.’
God, he’ssoknowledgeable. He seems to know everything there is to know about Christmas tree farming and heisn’ta Christmas tree farmer. It makes me realise just how much there is to learn, and how little time there is to do it in if I want to sell anything this year. I also wish he was a bit more approachable and a little less condescending so that I could ask him for advice without being ridiculed.
‘You need to concentrate on the trees you already have forthisseason. In January, you think about saving seed, preparing the soil, and planting up saplings, but your farm is a ridiculously overgrown mess that needs a lot of real-world physical work rightnowif you want to get it even halfway up to scratch before December.’
I gulp.
‘This business isn’t about sales figures,’ he continues. ‘It’s not like putting a neatly boxed product on a shelf and waiting for people to buy it. A business plan isn’t going to help with the real-life physical work that doesn’t take place behind a computer screen.’
‘I know figures. All businesses succeed or fail based on figures.’
‘Well, I don’t know figures, but I do know Christmas trees, and this—’ he pokes the crinkled piece of paper in my hand ‘—is worthless.’
We hold each other’s gaze for a long moment, and then he jerks his head towards my fields. ‘Let me show you what I mean. Want to come for a walk around with me? Maybe I can stop the next inventory consisting of “green trees, tall green trees, and taller green trees” so you’ve at least got some clue about what you’ve bought.’
I give him a scathing look because he’s nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is. I’m going to go on Amazon and order every book on Christmas tree farming I can findandfork out for next-day delivery, but he’s been more helpful than anything else so far and he clearly knows his stuff. He might think I’m an idiot, but I really need his advice. ‘That’d be great. As long as you’re bringing Gizmo.’
The little dog stands on my foot and I reach down to rub his ears as he wags his tail.
‘Of course. You’re honoured to see him at this time of day. Gizmo doesn’tdomornings, but he couldn’t wait to come over and see you.’ We hold each other’s gaze again, until Noel shakes his head and turns away. ‘He was probably worried that the squirrel might’ve come back and terrorised you overnight, or that you might’ve terrorised it.’
I narrow my eyes to show him just how unfunny I think he is, and he and Gizmo wait while I phone the two numbers he gave me and set up accounts with the water and electricity companies, who assure me the supply of both will be restored this morning. I’m not sure what I’m more excited about – light and water or the prospect of finally seeing some Christmas trees on this Christmas tree farm.
***
‘Welcome to Peppermint Branches.’ Noel unlatches a wooden gate at the end of the lane past the house and holds it open for me to go through. We disappear into a line of tall conifer trees, and in front of us is a wooden sign with directional arrows bearing names of tree species.Nordmann fir, Norway spruce, Peppermint fir, Blue spruce, Balsam fir.I reach out to touch the arrow signs, the words burnt into the wood in fancy writing. We’re in a grassy central area behind the conifers where wide tracks meet, one from the left and one from the right, and one back through the gate to the lane we’ve just come down. Through the tree trunks, I can see the first hint of a Christmas tree farm. I squeal in delight and that starts Gizmo off barking, and he pulls on his lead to chase after whatever unseen thing he thinks I’m squealing at.
‘I guess we’re going this way.’ Noel laughs as he lets himself be pulled along by the tiny dog. ‘Nordmann firs coming up.’
The path is wide enough for a tractor and the earth is dry and solid underfoot, hedged in by a row of holly bushes on either side. They haven’t been trimmed for a few years, with wild tops and branches shooting off in all directions, covered in green berries showing the first flush of red, and they’ve obviously outgrown their intended height because I can barely see over them.
‘Festive,’ Noel says when he sees me looking. ‘You should see it in the snow when the berries turn red and the robins go bob-bob-bobbing along the hedges. It looks like a scene from a Christmas card.’
I can picture it easily and I get a little flutter at the thought that this is mine. Somehow, I own this incredible place. It doesn’t seem real yet.
‘These are beautiful.’ I run my fingers carefully through the hedge, avoiding the thorns. The usual dark green glossy leaves are interspersed with different varieties of holly, some of the bushes have lighter green leaves with cream edges, and some are variegated leaves splashed with yellow. ‘Sprigs of these would look amazing as a table centrepiece. Or in wreaths.’ I reach up and pluck one of the overgrown bits from the top of the hedge, twisting the thick green stem around my fingers. I pick another branch of the darker green holly and wind them together, holding it up to show him. ‘Twist that with a few branches of cedar and some pine cones and it’d make a beautiful fresh wreath.’
‘My mum makes autumn wreaths. We sell them at the market from September onwards. Living wreaths are getting more popular every year. Already thinking about diversifying, eh? Maybe you’re not quite as terrible as you seem.’
I can’t hide my smile and the hint of pride that creeps in. I never thought twirling branches of holly together would be an enviable talent, but anything that makes me feel slightly less clueless is welcome at this point.
‘The track runs right the way around the farm so you can get the tractor out to every field, and each field has wide lanes to let you drive between them to collect the trees.’
The holly hedges break for a wooden gate with a faded ‘Nordmann fir’ sign hanging over it. He unhooks the gate and lets Gizmo go through first as we walk into a field full of Christmas trees, and even though I’m trying to contain it, a squeak of excitement slips out. Nowthisis a Christmas tree farm. In front of us is a never-ending field full of trees. Real, green, Christmas trees.Thisis what I’d pictured.Thisbears some resemblance to the photos on the auction site.
‘Why is this all hidden away back here?’ I say the first thing that comes into my head. ‘If it had looked like this when I drove in yesterday, I’d have been a lot happier.’
His laugh is quiet. ‘It’s not hidden away, it’s the fall of the harvest years.’ I must look at him blankly because he rolls his eyes. ‘You know the fields out front that are empty? Usually they’re full of Christmas trees too, but it just happens that Evergreene’s last harvest was from those fields. You cycle year on year. You plant a field one year and that’ll be mature in seven years’ time. The one you planted the previous year will be mature in six years’ time, and so on, until you’ve got a rolling stock of Christmas trees with a new batch ready every year. That system has got lost to the years of no maintenance and it’ll take a while to get it back into place again. One of the last things Evergreene did was replant those fields with saplings, but with no one looking after them, they were strangled by the weeds that have taken over. In the spring, your first job should be to dig over those fields and replant them. You’ll have to collect seed from your pinecones this winter, but the seedlings will be too small to plant direct. Evergreene prided himself on always growing from scratch and all his trees being of proper Peppermint Branches heritage, but the missing years have really set things back. A tree farm turns over year by year. One year relies on the next. Losing so many makes it almost like starting from scratch again.’
‘Tree heritage.’ I shake my head. I had no idea there was such a thing. ‘Do they have DNA tests? Ancestry.com for trees? Roots.com?’
‘Trees would be nothing without their roots.’
