Behind the scenes | Winter

You may be wondering what we’re doing with ourselves during these cold winter months when there are no flowers to cut in the field. Well, there is A LOT of planning, plotting and preparing for our 2023 season. For Rebecca, this means lots of sitting at the computer in front of the wood-fired Rayburn in the kitchen, (much to Donald’s delight) drinking too many cups of tea, (how much is too many?) making lists, spreadsheets, orders, learning how to navigate the new website and how to write a blog! Yes, this is a first….

For Scott, this is a muddy and cold but exciting few weeks as this is Christmas Tree planting season! Every Winter we plant around 1000 trees, destined for pride of place in our customers homes for the festive season.

We aren’t like most Christmas Tree farms for a few reasons: 1. We plant lots of different species of trees, not just the typical Norwegian Spruce or Nordmann Fir. 2. 1000 trees may sound like a lot, but typical Christmas Tree farms work on acres and acres of land and will typically grow upwards of 10,000 trees every year. 3. We do everything the hard(er) way! The trees are planted by hand rather than machine, the grass and weeds that inevitably cover the young trees are cleared with a hand scythe rather than harmful chemical sprays and each tree is lovingly pruned to shape in the hopes of one day outclassing the rest in the bestest Crimbo tree competition!

Scott is passionate about trees and has worked in Forestry for most of his adult life, with a Christmas Tree farm being his ultimate goal. So when the opportunity came, ready or not, we jumped at the chance. Especially as we knew they’d take 5-7 years to be anywhere near big enough for a Christmas Tree to be proud of.

The new baby Christmas Trees have arrived, all 1400 of them and it’s time to get them planted. But we have a slight problem. Deer. Oh dear! Embarking on this Christmas Tree growing journey we always knew that for the first couple of years of their life, the trees would potentially become a snack for the local Roe Deer population, so we planted a contingency to account for that, figuring that we’d take a percentage hit and just re-plant if we had to. But it turns out that the contingency wasn’t enough. In fact it seems that the deer have told all their friends, cousins, aunties and uncles and they’ve been having a christmas tree buffet! They don’t always kill the trees as they just nip off the tender tips, and they don’t gorge a whole row or section of trees at once, so what we’re left with is a patchy mis match of different heights and stages where the stunted trees stand next to their lucky un-munched neighbours. On a small scale farm like ours this is going to cause quite a problem.

Any big scale Christmas tree farmer might just take the hit of an insignificant amount amongst tens of thousands of trees or hire someone to deal with the problem, but for us on our tiny-in-comparison field, with our ethos of working with the nature and wildlife that surrounds us, not against it, there’s only one solution: to protect our precious saplings with a fence high enough to keep the deer out.

So, the baby trees are chilling out in their bags and boxes while we as-quickly-as-we-can manage, erect a 6 feet high fence around the entire field to cocoon them. This may seem like an expensive and drastic measure but when you’re willing, have experience in fencing and know a very kind neighbour with a tractor and post knocker it’s really not that bad. Phew! We’ll report back, so watch this space and pray that the local hare population doesn't now decide to move in!