Page 24 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
His voice is deadpan and his face doesn’t give anything away. I wait for him to start laughing, and when he doesn’t, I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Was that another tree pun?’
Finally, his mouth twitches at one side. ‘I don’t know, maybe I’m justbranchingout.’
I can’t stop myself giggling. He’s rugged and handsome, a typical broad-shouldered farmer, but some of the things that come out of his mouth are ridiculously adorable.
He stomps his boots into the grassy ground. ‘These are the Nordmann firs. Broad needles that retain water so they don’t drop, strong branches and soft foliage, and the needles have got a waxy coating so it’s the best tree for allergy sufferers.’
I’m kind of awed by the way he talks. His voice is deep and rough, but there’s a lightness to it when he talks like this. His eyes shine with passion, the colour of the trees reflecting to make them look closer to green than blue. I go over to the nearest tree and touch one of the lower branches. ‘Can I sell these this year?’
He casts his eyes across the field. ‘It’s not ideal, but you can. Thing is, and you have to understand this, everything you do for the next few years will be a way of trying to fix what’s happened to the farm in the years of being abandoned. These trees are overgrown and their roots are suffocated by weeds. You can dig up the weeds, but the damage is already done. They would’ve taken what they needed from the soil and prevented the trees from having it. They haven’t been fed so they’re missing the nutrients that make a healthy tree. The branches are thick and woody and growing haywire because they haven’t been sheared, and the optimum time to shear them is in the spring so they form new growth tips, and the summer gives the wounds a chance to heal without disease getting in.’
‘How about a nice Elastoplast?’
He laughs and then looks annoyed with himself for laughing. ‘I’m serious, Lee.’
Even Chelsea doesn’t call me Lee. I go to protest about him shortening my name, but he carries on before I have a chance.
‘You now have to prune them at the beginning of winter and they won’t have time to heal before cutting for sale – but you can’t sell them like this, look at the state of them, the poor buggers.’
They obviously look all right to Gizmo because he’s got his extending lead wrapped in some form of complicated bowline knot around several of the trunks and is now cocking his leg up one. ‘There you go, Gizmo’s helping with the nutrient situation.’
We’re both laughing as he finishes his business and walks around another tree, further entangling the lead. I look at the trees as Noel follows him, walking around trunks in an attempt to untangle the knot, like some kind of giant, forestial cat’s cradle game. Gizmo takes this as part of the fun and woofs at Noel, running off every time he gets close to him, circling through the weeds around each trunk, until the lead reaches its maximum length and Noel starts reeling him in.
I realise I’m just standing there smiling at them both, this giant man and his tiny dog. You’d expect a guy like Noel to have a big dog, not a Chihuahua wearing a hand-knitted paw-print hoodie. I can think of a few guys at work who’d scoff at the idea of having a little dog and probably make fun of anyone who did, but I like that Noel doesn’t care about stereotypes. I force myself to concentrate on the trees instead. The whole field looks like a wild forest. The trees themselves are standing at all different heights, and the branches have sprung out in every direction. None of them look anything like the traditional Christmas tree. None of them look like something you’d want standing in your home, although some of them could make decent Halloween decorations given the bare branches and gnarled twiggy ends. The once-uniform rows have been swallowed by weeds, and the ground is squelchy underfoot and the air smells of damp forest and rotting vegetation.
‘That’ll teach me to use the extending lead.’ The field is on a slight hill which I only realise when Noel stomps back up it with Gizmo safely in his arms. ‘So what do you think? Feel like you’ve bought a Christmas tree farm yet?’
‘I’m starting to,’ I say, because last night, it really did feel doubtful.
He holds the gate open and lets me go through first. The wooden sign bangs against it as he closes it behind us and deposits Gizmo on the track, locking the extending lead in place with a determined click. Gizmo ignores him and trots off down the path, expecting Noel to follow, and I lag behind as I watch him get pulled along.
Gizmo seems to know exactly where he’s going. He doesn’t look at Noel for direction or wait to see where we’re heading. It seems like a walk he’s done many times before, and it makes me wonder how much time Noel’s spent here over the years because I get the feeling it’s much more than he’s letting on.
The land slopes downhill and I run to catch up with my guide and his human, falling into step next to Noel as the burbling of a stream somewhere starts to filter into the silence created by the trees. All I’ve been able to hear until now is the occasional chirping of birds. It’s quiet in Elffield anyway, nothing like the city noises I’m used to, but being in the trees like this blocks out all other sounds and makes me feel isolated … no, not isolated. Quiet and still. Peaceful. It’s something I haven’t felt for a long time.
The hedges are lower as we walk around the bend of the track and I can see more trees, the fields we’ve yet to explore, and I’m sure my heart stops beating for a moment. I take a step nearer the hedge and duck to see under the lowest branches of a tall conifer. Between trunks, I can see how the path curves around the farm, the green of the low holly hedges fencing in fields of trees like the one we’ve just come from, and it really does take my breath away.
When I turn back, Gizmo and Noel are waiting for me.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he says as I walk towards him. ‘There’s a spot on one of the bridges that gives you an even better view. I was going to show you on the way back.’
‘Oneof the bridges?’ I say. ‘Just how big is this place?’
‘Big enough to require two bridges?’ he says with a laugh as we wander off down the track again. ‘Like I said, you’ve got an unmarked river running through the middle, and this path runs around the farm in a circle, so it crosses the river in two places. The track was dug by Evergreene’s grandfather and the bridges were hand-built by him and his son – Evergreene’s father. You should see them in the winter when the icicles form. Another Christmas-card-worthy scene.’
‘This whole place is like something from a Christmas card.’ I look behind me even though the hedge has risen up again now, blocking the trees from view. ‘I didn’t think places like this existed in real life. I thought they were only made by movie set decorators.’
‘They don’t make them as good as this,’ he says, and there’s such genuine affection in his voice that it makes me feel warm inside despite the chill in the October morning. ‘You’ll love it when it snows. We get quite a bit here and it’s brilliant for business. It makes people want to come to a Christmas tree farm. There’s something special about so many trees in one place. One acre of trees produces enough oxygen for eighteen people, so maybe there’s something chemical in the theory. Inhaling all that oxygen makes your body produce extra serotonin or something. Did you know that opera singers used to walk among Christmas trees before a performance because they believed that breathing in pine would lubricate the larynx?’
I can tell he’s trying to redirect the conversation. I think about the way his voice sounds different when he talks about Peppermint Branches and how even Gizmo knows his way around. ‘You’ve spent a lot of time here, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah, my dad always loved this place. We used to come over every day when I was little. In the summer, we’d bring picnics and Evergreene would join us, him and my dad would sit on the riverbank while I paddled in the stream, and then in the winter, it was pure magic. The trees were like a maze and I’d run through them with Dad chasing me. We were always here early in the morning, before it was open to other people, and you know how snow blankets every other sound and makes everything seem soft? Those snowy winter mornings in the Christmas trees, making the first footprints in acres of pure white fluffiness … they’re my favourite memories. If it wasn’t snow, then the whole place would be sparkling with frost. Evergreene used to tell visiting kids there were elves here, that they’d dash in and out of the trees and report back to Santa on who was being naughty and nice and whenever you saw the frost sparkling, it meant he’d been down from the North Pole for an update. I was far too old to believe in any of that stuff, but when I was here, even I started to wonder … This place makes it easy to believe in magic.’
‘It sounds perfect.’
He nods. ‘My dad always said that if Evergreene decided to sell, he’d buy him out and run both farms side by side. It wasn’t meant to be, but …’ He trails off and gives himself a shake. ‘Sorry, I’m being a sentimental sod. But that magic … that feeling that makes all the Christmas stories seem like they could be real … I’ve been to other Christmas tree farms, butthatis something that’s unique to Peppermint Branches. You need to recreate that.’
Recreating magic. That sounds easy. But there’s something about the way Noel talks that makes me believe it could be like that again. I wish I could’ve seen it back then, because it sounds like such a special place, and I don’t feel worthy of trying to make it that special again.
