Page 32 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
‘We’re a village that relies solely on our market, but there’s a good community here. We support our own.’ He lifts a hand and points directly ahead of us. ‘That’s the market.’
I look towards a large set of pillars ahead of us. They look like columns from ancient Rome, holding up the sharp angled roof of a covered market building. The lights are on inside, making it look warm and inviting, and the area in front of the entrance is paved with slabs in shades of grey. Noel drives around it and takes a narrow side street that winds around the back of the huge building and eventually opens up to another set of pillars wide enough to let vehicles through. ‘Trade entrance,’ he says. ‘If you sell trees here, get customers to drive round this way to load their car, it’s much easier than dragging an eight-foot spruce between all the stallholders.’
I nod, wishing I’d brought a notebook and pen to jot all his tips down. I’m never going to remember all of this. Also, just how heavy are eight-foot trees?
I’ve never seen anyone drive as slowly as Noel creeps through the wide market lane, already buzzing with people setting up their stalls. There are people on stepladders stringing up bunting and fairy lights across their awning, people carrying crates of goods to and from their cars, and people merrily chatting away with cups of coffee in hand.
Noel stops at a covered stall, a series of long trestle tables in a backwards L-shape with a wide space in front of it, bright orange awning emblazoned with a big Roscoe Farm logo and ‘Pumpkins’ in swirly calligraphy doodled underneath. I stand on the flagstone floor and have a look around while Noel shouts good morning to other traders in our lane and greets them with a wave and a smile.
It’s a good spot. One lane back from the front entrance, just enough for a bit of protection from the elements, easily visible from both side entrances, and on the corner before the market opens out into a much larger space with many more stalls. In the chaos of set-up time, I catch sight of a Scottish souvenir stall, a used bookseller, a baker whose scent of freshly baked bread has wafted through the building, a handmade jewellery stall, and a cheese seller offering chutneys and crackers along with a selection of locally made cheeses.
Noel pulls the cover off the bed of his truck, uncovering wooden crates which are so packed with pumpkins that they’re spilling over the edges. ‘Do you think you brought enough?’
‘It would be a good day if I didn’t,’ he says, completely missing the sarcasm.
‘Can I help?’
He grunts as he sets the first crate down in front of the back table. ‘Pick the best ones and display them along the back of the stall. The side area is for baked goods.’
I crouch down beside the crate and wonder what on earth constitutes a ‘best’ pumpkin. He unloads another two crates and puts them next to the one I’m still poring over. He stops on the way to get a fourth one and leans down beside me, plucking one I’d already rejected from the crate with one hand and plonking it onto the table with a thud. ‘That’sa good one. It’s not a nuclear chemistry exam, just grab anything. All defects make interesting features to a pumpkin carver’s eye. People like the dodgiest-looking ones.’
He hefts yet another crate from the truck and dumps it on the ground next to the others. I pick a random pumpkin from the second crate, examine it for anything that could be defined as an interesting feature, and plonk it quickly onto the table to show him that I’m not completely useless.
The fourth crate of pumpkins seems to be the last, because he moves onto another crate, and this one smells so good that I can tell what it is before he’s even pulled the cover back. It’s full of pumpkin spice muffins packed in boxes of two, individually boxed pumpkin cupcakes with buttercream swirls, wrapped sugar cookies in the shape of pumpkins and iced with orange icing, bags of roasted, salted pumpkin seeds, and jars of pumpkin ginger jam and pumpkin orange marmalade with handwritten labels and gingham tops.
‘Your mum made all these?’ I ask, impressed with the many uses Glenna can find for a pumpkin and how delicious everything looks. I had no idea pumpkins were so versatile.
‘Yep.’ He retrieves a large sandwich board from the truck, sets it down in front of the stall and crouches in front of it. He pulls a pack of chalk from his pocket and starts sketching on it. When he stands up, it’s got orange pumpkins and green vines decorating the edges and in the middle, in neater handwriting than I’ve got on lined paper in biro, is written ‘Pumpkins: 75p each or two for £1’ in swirly, fancy white writing, complete with green leaves sprawling from each letter. It’s a work of art and it’s only taken him three minutes.
‘Two for a pound?’ I say in surprise. ‘They’re, like, three quid each in the supermarket.’
‘Exactly. If a busy mum with a family of four goes to the supermarket, that’s quite an outlay – she’s probably only going to buy one pumpkin for all the family – but if she comes past here, at fifty pence each, it’s easier and cheaper to say, ‘oh, you can all have one’. I sell more pumpkins, her family gets to enjoy themselves for minimal cost. It might seem counterproductive to someone who’s used to paying over the odds for everything in the city, but here we sell cheap and we sell more.’ He lays out a handful of Roscoe Farm branded carving kits beside the pumpkins. ‘Remember that.’
I clearly have a lot to learn about the pricing of Christmas trees.
‘Oh, look, there’s Fergus and Iain now.’ His hands touch my back and push me across the aisle to where a car has pulled up next to a little wooden stall covered by red and white striped awning. ‘This is Leah. She’s just bought Peppermint Branches,’ he shouts across as a white-haired man leaning on a walking stick gets out of the passenger door and a man in his fifties emerges from the driver’s side.
‘Could you shout a bit louder?’ I turn back to hiss at him. ‘I think there’s a deaf chap in Cornwall who didn’t quite hear.’
‘I was telling her you used to work there, Iain …’ he calls over as I shake both their hands.
I don’t know how it happens, but I start telling Iain about the state of the trees and the overgrown hedges while Fergus hands me a tray of neatly wrapped gingerbread … llamas. Llamas in biscuit form. I have to blink a few times to make sure I’m not mistaken as he directs me to put it on the stall. While I help them unload the car, Iain talks about cutting trees and keeping the weeds down, and the heady scent of all the gingerbread makes me take leave of my senses, because before I know it, I’ve offered him a job and he’s starting on Monday.
‘There you go, that wasn’t so difficult,’ Noel says when I go back across to the pumpkin stall. ‘You’ve got your first employee. And if you come and talk to my seasonal workers this afternoon, you’ll easily have two more.’
‘And suddenly I’m an employer.’ I feel a bit shellshocked. ‘I wasn’t expecting this. I intended to plod along by myself, learning as I went. I didn’t expect to be employing three people. That’s quite a responsibility. Don’t I need some kind of insurance? What if I can’t pay them?’
‘You need employers’ liability insurance, and public liability when you open to the public. It’s easy enough to sort out. And whatever you’ve got left of the budgethasto go on the workers’ salaries. It’s going to be a vicious circle otherwise. Without help, you won’t be able to get the trees anywhere near sellable or the farm anywhere close to opening standard, so you won’t sell any trees and you’ll be in an even worse position next year. This is great. You’re off to the right start.’
I wish I felt as confident as he sounds. Instead, I feel overwhelmed again. I glance back towards Iain, who is now giving his father an animated demonstration of shearing Christmas trees. He wassohappy about the prospect of working there again, and Noel has made it sound so magical and loved by so many people … I can feel the pressure building on me. What if I let everyone down?
‘You should go and introduce yourself to everyone, start getting the word out that Peppermint Branches is opening again.’
‘Talk to strangers? Just, like, randomly go up to people and tell them I bought the tree farm?’ My heart jumps into my throat and my palms start sweating. ‘You are joking, right? People don’t actually do that, do they?’
He laughs, not realising that I’mnotjoking. ‘Everyone’s very friendly. And Peppermint Branches was really popular around here, people will be overjoyed to hear it’s opening again.’
‘I can’t just go up to people I don’t know and tell them I’m opening a tree farm!’
