2021 Tree and Wreath Season

It’s safe to say that the “tree and wreath season” of 2021 is over for us and we consider it to have been a successful one. Christmas day has passed and as we’re approaching the end of the year, we see that people are in the process of packing up their ornaments for another year. Since we don’t do the labour aspect of growing and looking after the Christmas trees on the farm (we have an arrangement with some local experts to look after our trees), tree season is relatively short for us. Tree growers look after the trees nearly year-round, but we only spend a few weeks (November and December) dealing with trees and wreaths. Some of that is administrative, marketing, sourcing labour and supplies etc with only a couple weekends of physical work in the tree lot for our annual U-Pick and roughly one month on wreath making.

After a difficult U-Pick season last year with the HRM/community travel restrictions coming into place right before our U-pick (where we instantly had to ask half of our customers to avoid travel to our little rural community), we consider ourselves fortunate of the timing of our U-Pick this year. There were relatively low case numbers of Covid-19 during the two weekends when we had our U-pick and things seemed relatively “normal”. With lots of room to social distance in the multi-acre tree lot, there was no need to wear masks and families could take their time and enjoy the annual tradition of finding the perfect Christmas tree.

New this year, we trialed tractor and wagon rides to add to the experience. As the wagon rides were slightly complicated and labour intensive (as we had to verify riders were vaccinated and masked/in the same family group) we were only able to offer a few rides during slow periods. According to the feedback we received, and the smiles on people’s faces, this was an enjoyable activity that we hope to offer more in the future. This year, we also coordinated local photographer Matthew Gates to capture some photos and videos during the U-Pick that we can use to promote future farm and U-Pick events. We’ve included a couple of his photos here in this post.

In addition to the tree U-Pick, Christina spends roughly one month each year making Christmas wreaths. She waits until after Remembrance Day to start cutting brush and spends a couple weeks of vacation time from her day job making wreaths. She cuts all of the brush by hand from the roads and fence lines around the farm. She makes a couple hundred wreaths each year making one at a time by snipping the brush into smaller pieces and attaching it to the wire wreath rings by hand. She has a number of regular customers for whom she makes wreaths for each year and supplies a hockey team fundraiser. The last wreaths of the year are sold during our Christmas Tree U-Pick. The only wreath left unsold this year was the one we hung on the front of our house.

Now that trees and wreaths are done, we move onto other tasks. Barn chores for the cows and chickens are a twice a day commitment. We tackle paperwork that we’ve put off for months and start planning for the year to come.