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| Photo: https://grannymarigold.blogspot.com/ |
Words and pictures can set our memories loose. This one makes me think of home and Christmas holidays. The word home is a prompt that provokes pages and pages of writing for me.
This picture takes me back to Santa's Forest, our Christmas Tree farm. Barry and I joined Gay and Stu in planting and growing trees on the family farm in southwest Georgia. It was Gay's idea and she convinced us to go into the business although Barry had misgivings from the start.
None of us knew how much hard work went into growing the trees from little plantings we purchased in February, heeled in, until we could plant them in the rows we had plowed with our little Kabota tractor. We began with a five-acre farm and planted one acre, a new crop, each year because it took five years for the trees to be large enough and shaped properly to sell. Gay was amazing. She learned how to prune those trees and each summer, she hired a crew of teenage boys and taught them how to properly trim the limbs to make the pines look like Christmas trees.
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| Gay and I heeling in the young plants that would become Christmas Trees in five years. |
We soon found that I was not much help with all that outdoor work.
My allergies were triggered by the spray used to kill weeds and keep insects from harming the trees. But my little sister was determined to make a go of that farm and she did. She might go home looking like she had been dipped in a vat of green dye, but that was because she had been on the tractor all day greening the trees so they would look pretty to the Christmas shoppers.
The fun part of tree farming for me was selling the trees to the people who came to cut their own.
Families chose the one tree that would best fit into their home. We played Christmas music that helped keep us all in the holiday spirit. It could be heard all over the farm. We rented a small trailer for the season. It was used as our sales office and the place where we could retreat when the weather was cold and nasty.
Many friends and their families made tree shopping at Santa's Forest a family tradition. Although we had fun and enjoyed working together, it became a full-time job for Gay. I am happy we gave this enterprise a go. I learned so much and I think we all learned many things that have served us well over the years.
The tree farm became too much for Gay to handle alone.
It was sold to a family member who soon learned that tree farming was not as easy as it seemed. He let the trees grow large and thick and turned the farm into a once-a-year event that has been fruitful for him. Santa's Forest is now The Haunted Forest and people from all around the area make an annual October trip to the haunted forest where they get their Halloween excitement. Family members and their friends work together to create scary thrills for those who are brave enough to enter.
Christmas holds so many memories for me and they are all centered on family and home.
Do you have happy Christmas memories? Where do they take you?
Books make great Christmas gifts
