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. Now this is a Christmas tree farm. In front of us is a never-ending field full of trees. Real, green, Christmas trees. This is what I’d pictured. This bears 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.’
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 just branching out.’
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 s
ee 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.’
‘One of 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, but that is 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.
There’s another gate hidden in the hedgerow and Gizmo stops in front of it and wags his tail, waiting for us to catch up and let him in. He’s probably excited by the prospect of some more tree trunks to get tangled up in.
‘Peppermint fir.’ I run my fingers over the wood-burned sign. ‘Another tree name I’ve never heard of.’
‘Yeah, there’s a reason for that. Lee, wait. This field … there’s something I need to tell you …’
‘Let me guess, it’s overrun with weeds that have leeched all the nutrients from the soil, the trees have grown wild, and I haven’t got a hope in hell of getting anything back right again before Christmas?’ I unlatch the gate and Gizmo rushes through before I’ve got it fully open.
I stop in surprise and Noel crashes right into me when Gizmo reaches the end of his leash and yanks Noel with him.
‘Sorry,’ he murmurs, backing away.
This field is different. There are no weeds. Instead, the perfectly cone-shaped trees are planted in tidy rows on a bed of neat moss. Each one has a circular shape of bare earth underneath it, and the sharp, sweet and refreshing scent of Christmas trees fills the air.
‘Someone’s been taking care of these,’ I say, although it’s blatantly obvious who that is.
He bends down to unhook Gizmo’s lead and the Chihuahua bounces across the moss like he’s done it many times before. ‘This is Evergreene’s life’s work. He was attempting to create the perfect Christmas tree by making a hybrid of all the best. They’ve got the shape of a Norway spruce, the needle retention of a Fraser fir, the branch strength of a Nordmann fir, the colour of a cross between a Blue spruce and a White spruce, and the scent of a Balsam fir, the most desirable and traditional Christmas tree scent.’
‘He bred these?’ My feet press into the spongy moss as I walk across to the nearest tree and run my fingers over one of its stiff branches, surprised by the softness of the needles.
He nods. ‘From years and years of grafts, splicing seeds, and cross-pollinating.’ I feel his eyes on me as I look at the tree. ‘Strong branches for holding ornaments but needles that are soft to the touch and won’t fall out.’
I inhale the scent from the branch and close my eyes, instantly transported back to Christmas in my parents’ living room, sitting next to a tree that smelled like this, tearing wrapping paper off Barbie dolls and Polly Pockets that I’d been wanting for months. Lying on the floor beside it in the afternoon, full from Mum’s Christmas dinner, playing Monopoly with cousins while grandparents from both sides of the family dozed in front of the Queen’s speech.
‘It’s got a lot of water retained in its trunk, so it won’t die if people forget to water it. Its roots are neat so it transplants easily. It won’t grow beyond eight foot so it remains manageable. We did surveys for years asking everyone what they wanted in a Christmas tree, what annoyed them most about the ones they’d had, what they’d liked, what they hadn’t, and what they’d like to be different.’
‘They’re beautiful.’ I run my fingers over the soft needles even though I can’t take my eyes off Noel. He lights up when he talks about trees.
He wa
lks over to the one I’m stroking, pulls a pair of secateurs from the pocket of his cargo trousers and deposits them in my hand. He nods to the tree in front of us. ‘There are a couple of strays that need to come off.’
‘What are you – an exam invigilator?’ I use my thumb to turn the metal catch on the handle and open the secateurs, snipping them in the air a few times before I attack the tree.
I surprise myself because I can actually see what he means. There are a few slim branches of fresh growth – soft, brighter green needles that have sprung out from the neat lines of the shaped tree, and I clip them off, feeling his eyes on me as I walk around the tree to ensure I haven’t missed any. ‘So is this part of the coursework and does it count towards my final grade?’
He laughs. ‘And that’s your first lesson as a Christmas tree farmer – never go anywhere without secateurs in your pocket, you will find strays that need to come off and you’ll never find them again if you walk away.’
I twist the two branches I snipped off with the sprigs of holly that are still in my hand. The colours are gorgeous together, the greens intertwining to make the red berries pop. It would make a perfect wreath with some pinecones and a couple of silver bells added.
‘You can keep those,’ he says when I go to hand the secateurs back to him. ‘They were Evergreene’s anyway, a long time ago. And I’m sorry about the trees. I know they weren’t mine to take care of. I’ve been trespassing onto your land for years.’ He winds his fingers in his hair and tugs at a dark lock. ‘This field backs onto one of mine so it’s been easy to slip through the hedge. I shouldn’t have, I know that, but I couldn’t sit back and watch them die when I knew how much they meant to Evergreene. He’d spent the last twenty years of his life working on them.’
His tongue must be twiddling the piercing because it’s turning in his lip, and I find that I don’t really care about anything else. Maybe it has some kind of hypnotic power. ‘You keep saying “we” – you were involved too?’
Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm Page 10