Spring Hill Tree Farm - Oh! Christmas tree...

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Dan at Spring Hill Tree Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Dan at Spring Hill Tree Farm. Good morning, Dan. How are things in Georgia today? Good morning. Things are good, sunny, clear skies, and I just got done working in the strawberry field a few minutes ago.

00:30
Nice. It is incredibly overcast and sprinkling here in Minnesota this morning. For the third day in a row. So strawberries, is that for next year? You're getting them ready for next year? Yeah. So in South Georgia, you grow, you plant strawberries in October, and then they fruit usually in March after that last frost, about 30 days after the last frost.

01:00
Okay, cool. So tell me about yourself and what you guys do. Yeah, so I am a third generation specialty farmer, if you will. We do what you what you call agritourism. So we're here on Spring Hill Farm in Bainbridge, Georgia. And we've been doing agritourism for about 40 years now. Agritourism, simply put, is

01:29
Really, I mean you can take the two words right so agriculture and tourism and sort of blend them together and It's anything that you can do on your farm whether it's an event or maybe like a you pick scenario Trail rides something of that sort right to get people to come out and enjoy your property and You know usually charge some some small fee for them to come and do that Okay, so you've been doing it for 40 years I know that

01:59
Agritourism has been a thing, like a buzzword for the last few years, but it's always been a thing. I mean, I'm 55 and I remember my parents taking me to farms where they were like, let's go on a hayride and pick apples or let's go see cows or whatever it was that they were doing. So you're an OG, you're an OG agritourism dude. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, my dad and I, so I'm...

02:29
I'm 28, I'm the younger person on the farm that's sort of starting to take over things a little bit more. My dad's been doing this for a long time. And I remember he and I would go on trips to Atlanta because we're in South Georgia. And a few years ago, man, it was longer than that, 10 years ago or so maybe, we were driving down Highway 27. And we saw this sign that says, you know, Georgia's first agritourism farm on the left.

02:57
We're thinking, well, what's agritourism? That sounds like what we're doing. And we started to learn more about it and we said, well, they're not the first. And we don't, we don't claim that we're the first, but, but it is growing in the, in, it is a buzzword and I think it's the second largest or second fastest growing business in Georgia and has been for some, for some time.

03:22
Yes, and I am a huge proponent for agritourism because so many people have never set foot on a farm. And I think that they thought that they couldn't like, call and ask if they come visit. So I love that people are opening up their properties to people to come see what they do. Yeah, that's, that's what my grandfather would have wanted when he bought the property. He, he worked his whole life, was in the military and

03:52
sort of came across the US, started in Oklahoma, went to Texas, went to Atlanta, then came here and always wanted to buy some property with the end goal of being able to share it with people. And what's really cool about this property is he came down here and searched and searched and searched for some property and everything down here is flat, you know, peanut fields, corn fields.

04:19
And he just wasn't interested in flat land. He had seen enough of that in Oklahoma and wanted to see more trees. And they found this property. We're on the highest elevation in Decatur County is where we're at. And we are 321 feet above sea level, which is not a crazy amount, but for here it is. And we're on what's called Curry Hill. So it's this ridge that runs through.

04:49
um this area and it just it has you know springs on the farm creeks on the farm valleys um really beautiful property and i think when he and my dad found this place they kind of looked at each other like hey you know don't say anything let's let's go ahead and get this deal done um so and so 40 i think we got it they got it in 1982 and the next year uh my grandfather had

05:18
you know, so many hundred Christmas trees and he and my dad were going to do that. And unfortunately my grandfather passed away before they, before they arrived. And so my dad just kind of had this, uh, you know, I guess he had a decision to make and when the Christmas trees showed up, um, he planted them and then the rest is kind of history. Sure. And that is a fantastic story. Um,

05:46
So I want to get to the Christmas trees since we're now in November and it's getting to be that time. But I also want to know what you guys do from like spring through till now. Yeah. So spring is reserved for strawberry, you pick. But of course we do, we grow other things. We grow sweet onions. You can't call them Vidalia because you're not in Vidalia, Georgia, but they are.

06:14
the same type of onion. And we grow bok choy, we grow lettuce, we grow all sorts of greens, kale, things that are companion plants to strawberries. Strawberries are our main bread and butter in the spring. And we usually sprinkle in some events with that. Our events are, you know, really family oriented. You can come out and you can pick. You can also do a hay

06:44
We do these actually, you may have seen it like a state fair. We actually do a pig races. Those are one thing we do. We do horseback riding, all sorts of stuff that people just really enjoy. You don't run out of things to do. We do horse trail rides. We do 5Ks. So that's kind of what we do in the spring. Okay. The summertime, it's so hot.

07:13
It's so hot here in the summer and it's so humid. We will try to, at the end of the spring, early summer, do like a watermelon sort of day. People can come out and pick watermelons, eat watermelons, and then we'll have like a summer splash pad thing going on. So really it's just something for the kids to come out and sort of cool off a little bit and enjoy some good fruit. But really once you get past that last...

07:43
you know, May, really everybody in South Georgia is inside by the air conditioner. You don't go outside that time of year unless you can help it. So we really sort of just, we sort of hit a lull through the summer and just let the field sort of recuperate, you know? And so then we go from there and then we go into fall, which is our busiest season. We just got out of October.

08:12
And we do fall family fun and we do a huge, huge event every weekend in October where we do a few of the similar things that I was mentioning in the spring. But we've got one of the only pumpkin chunkers, it's a trebuchet in Georgia and it's really neat. So it's one of those things that you would see like medieval, you know?

08:42
Yes, yep. And basically you put the pumpkin in it and it flings it way off in the distance, is that how it works? Yeah, so it's a trebuchet. It's not a catapult, it's a trebuchet. It's got about 800 pounds of weights affixed to it and then we pull down the top of it with a winch and then you stick a lever through it, put the pumpkin in the net, you pull the lever, the weights drop and the pumpkin goes.

09:12
Is there anything actually pumpkin looking by the time it hits the ground or is it just pumpkin pieces everywhere? It's just pieces everywhere but within a couple weeks or so, you see it's almost like a pumpkin patch at where that happened. Yeah. Yeah, fun. Okay. So, let's talk about Christmas trees. There is a Christmas tree grower here.

09:40
where I live not far from where I actually live in my house. And I have to get ahold of them because I was supposed to talk to them last fall and things didn't work. But since you grow Christmas trees, I have questions. Number one, when you guys get new Christmas tree seedlings in, are they just little tiny or are they like a foot tall or how does it work? Yeah. They're about a foot tall and they're a plug.

10:10
They've got the soil already on them. In most cases, you know, I should really preface all this with just letting you know the varieties that we can sort of plant down here. Yes, please. So down here, even though we are on the highest elevation, we are nowhere near the elevation we need to be to grow the type of hallmark Christmas tree you might envision. So that would be your Frasier fir.

10:39
or your Douglas fir. And those are just beautiful trees. They can only be grown at above 3,000 foot sea level, that elevation. So clearly we are far from that. We do bring those trees in by the truckload because so many people want them. We get them from a farm in North Carolina. So we'll have those, but then to answer your question, the...

11:09
What we can grow is Virginia Pines, Murray Cypresses, and Carolina Sapphire. And those all grow really well. The Virginia Pine, they're going to be like a bare root. No soil. The root is about a foot long and so is the tree when it comes in. We'll take a dibble and stick it in the ground. And then it's important to make sure that you plug the root into the ground straight down. You don't want it to...

11:39
what you call J root where the root is sort of comes back up. And so that's how you plant a pine tree. The Carolina Sapphires and the Cypresses, they come in, um, they already have soil. They've already got great roots. We, uh, take a little post hole digger, dig a small hole and, uh, just put them right in the ground. Okay. So I have another question based off of your answer. Um, the, the balsam fir that you were talking about, that

12:05
needs to grow at over 3000 feet elevation. Why is that? It's got something to do, and I'm not an expert with it, obviously because I can't grow them, but it's got something to do with the length of the day. And how much sunlight they get in certain seasons, if that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, that does make sense.

12:31
I know that sunlight affects chickens. Chickens will not lay eggs if they don't get 12 hours of sunlight a day, typically. So the sun has a lot to do with how things grow or produce. Okay, cool. So you're not an expert necessarily on everything Christmas tree, but I have a question you might be able to answer. When I was a kid, my dad would go out and cut a Christmas tree from not private land.

13:01
I grew up in Maine, so Maine's a little bit less pissy about people cutting Christmas trees or they used to be. And he would typically cut a spruce tree. And there was one year that he got what was called a skunk spruce. And there's a variety of spruce trees. That's not the actual name for it. But if you cut them and they warm up, they smell like a skunk. He didn't mean to cut that kind, but he did.

13:30
And so that one went out in the woods and fed birds all winter because he put peanut butter and bird seed on it. And then he cut down a regular spruce tree and that was great. My question is, back when I was a kid, we had the big lights that threw heat on the strings that went around the tree. And people don't do that anymore. They do LED lights because LED lights don't get hot and don't cause fires. And I swear to you,

13:59
The trees that I grew up with in my house at Christmas time smelled amazing. You could not walk in the house without knowing there was a live cut tree in our house. And for the last 10 years when we've gotten a tree at, oh, I don't know, Home Depot or Lowe's, they don't smell like anything. So my question is, is it the heat from the lights that made it smell so good? Is that why?

14:28
Well, you're going to have different smells with different types of trees to your point, right? I've noticed that, you know, a cypress and a pine don't have as much of a smell versus a fir and a like a Carolina Sapphire. They're almost like what you would see people, you know, try to like block their neighbors with or, you know, like the trees that get really bushy. Those smell really good.

14:58
And I really think it does come down to the variety. But also you brought up like Home Depot and Lowe's, they are not known to have the best quality trees. When we buy our trees from North Carolina, for instance, we have a conversation with the grower and it's very frank. And we say, he says, you know, do you want ones or do you want twos?

15:27
and ones are going to cost a lot more than the twos are. And we go ahead and pay that premium so we can get trees that we know, one, don't have any holes, but also we're probably cut a lot closer to the delivery date versus the twos, right? And so when I say ones and twos, I mean like premium versus like, okay. And so that's what Home Depot and Lowe's are doing. You may say, well, I find a great tree there.

15:57
Okay, but not all the time, right? They, from what I see, they are buying not as good of trees as we are. And so that also means that when you get that tree, it's probably almost dead. And that's gonna have a lot to do with the smell. One thing that we encourage our customers to do is when they come out here, and we go ahead and offer to do it for them, but when they come here and they get a tree from us,

16:26
We will put a fresh cut on it. You've probably heard of that. And you need to put a fresh cut on every tree that you get unless of course you cut it fresh from the field. But if you're getting one that's already cut, say at your local store, you need to put at least an inch of a fresh cut on that stump and within the hour, you need to get it in lukewarm water. And that's going to open it up to be able to absorb that water and that's what's going to get your smell going again.

16:56
Okay.

16:59
Okay, awesome. I just, I didn't know and I wanted to ask because I've been trying to find out for years because it makes me so sad that we get a real tree in our house and I can't smell it. And I have a really good sniffer. My nose is great. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to smell a Christmas tree in my house. So, and I want to share that Christmas tends to be my favorite holiday ever and not because I'm particularly

17:25
religious but because I feel like Christmas is a very cozy, very sensory full holiday, you know all the tastes, all the smells, all the sights. And I just freaking love Christmas time. And so when I saw that you guys grow Christmas trees, I was like, yes, finally someone who I can talk to about Christmas trees. And it's November. We are literally rolling into my favorite holiday time. Yeah.

17:51
Yeah, we love Christmas obviously. I grew up pretty much looking forward to Christmas all the time. Not only because of like, you know, how great and cozy it is and all the things you said, but for me it meant I've got a job, right? I've got a job from the day we open until the day we close and then the day we close, my dad and I would be able to spend time together because he'd be done with for the year and...

18:20
I look forward to that. So it means, I feel like to your point, you know, Christmas means a lot of different things to different people. For me, I think of the smells, I think of the music that we play under the barn. I think of hanging Christmas trees with my dad, cutting Christmas trees. And you know, it's just, it's a special, it is a special holiday.

18:49
light, whether you're talking about the light of the world as in Jesus Christ, or if you're talking about light coming back into the world because Christmas usually falls around the solstice when the days start to get longer. But it's all about bringing light and peace back into your world. And it's such a beautiful thought. And right now, considering today's election day, I am all for bringing light and happiness and peace into the world.

19:16
Yes, I'm sure a lot of people can appreciate that. Uh huh. Yes, I am. I'm going to go to bed tonight and be like, okay, if the person I want to win doesn't win, I won't be surprised. And if the person I don't want to win wins, I won't be surprised. And that way I don't have to cry my eyes out tomorrow morning either way. So yeah, there's a lot of feelings wrapped around today and tomorrow. And I don't talk politics on the

19:44
the podcast so I will never say who or what but it's gonna be a very long day today and a very long night tonight for a lot of people waiting to find out what happens. So Christmas, let's see, what's your favorite Christmas food? I figured that's probably a good question if you love Christmas. Oh, it's hard to pick just one. I'd probably turkey.

20:12
And if not the turkey, hmm. My grandmother always made these, she would take cucumbers and slice them up and make like this, like soak them in some sort of like cranberry sauce or something. I don't know if you ever had this before, like cranberry cucumbers. They're like pickled cucumbers. Yeah. And man, they're out of this world.

20:39
So you should, you should Google that and get, and get the recipe. Cause if you, we, we always had fresh cucumbers and then she would jar these things up and they're tremendous. Nice. I would never have thought of cranberry sauce as a, a pickling agent, but that makes sense. Um, I make a homemade cranberry sauce with fruit, with fresh cranberries and orange peel and I don't even know what else goes in it, but it's a very.

21:08
fallish tasting cranberry sauce. I think there's cloves and ginger in it too. And the first time I made it, I had no idea what I was doing and I thought this is going to turn out awful. And I did it to take to a family gathering where my husband and I were making the dinner for the whole family. And I'm like, I'm going to try something new and embarrass myself. Everybody raved about this cranberry sauce. And I was like, oh, I guess this is a new favorite. Okay.

21:38
My favorite Christmas food is a tray of all different kinds of Christmas cookies. That's my favorite thing about Christmas is somebody handing me a little plate with like eight different kinds of Christmas cookies on it. Very nice. I live for Christmas cookies because I don't like making them because when you make them, you're stuck with one kind and there's like 50 cookies of the same kind.

22:07
I want other people's Christmas cookies. I don't want my Christmas cookies. Well, you can have them. I've never been a big sweets person. What I just described with the cucumbers is probably about as far as I would go sweets-wise. For some reason, never cared for them. Well, everybody's different. Everybody's palate is completely different. So I'm okay with that. Yeah. So do people...

22:36
I don't know how to ask this right. When you are selling your Christmas trees, you start selling them Thanksgiving Day or the day after Thanksgiving Day? Yeah. Thanksgiving Day at 2 p.m. our whole family will eat under the barn and then at 2 we'll all get ready to put our gloves on and people will start showing up. Okay. So you said you bring in spruce trees because you guys don't grow them.

23:05
or furs, sorry. So- Fraser Furs, yeah, we bring those in and we hang them underneath the barn so people can sort of peruse through them. Okay. And I'm guessing that you have families come in to pick out a tree for their home. Oh, yeah. We have so many people come that have been, I mean, I remember kids that were my age coming with their family.

23:36
you know, obviously we're older and now they're coming out here with their family. And so yeah, I've been seeing the same people my whole life. And then every now and then, you know, we start seeing a few new people that moved to the area and, you know, different Christmas tree operations shut down and they start coming to us. We see a lot of that. So, but yeah, you see a lot of the same people. It's a lot of, it's very family, family oriented.

24:04
Okay, so the little kids like four to six years old when they come with their family to pick out their tree. Cause that's about the time kids start really remembering things and getting into the holidays, like starting to understand that it's exciting and fun. Are they, when they walk in and see all these trees, do their faces light up and are they bouncing up and down? Oh yeah. Yeah. They're, uh,

24:29
I want this one, I want that one, you know, and usually they get their way or mama gets her way. But yeah, no, they're happy. But there's so many, most of the kids that come here are really familiar with our farm and so when they get here, they're like, you know, they're really interested in the Christmas tree for a few minutes and then they're like, oh, okay, they still have their corn maze up or they still got those horses over there, they've still got tire swings, they've still got mini golf.

24:56
And so they start running all over the place because they know there's so many other things to do. They're just besides themselves, you know. Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about the fact that it's Georgia. It's probably not six feet of snow and freezing when they come to get their Christmas tree. No snow. I think I've seen snow here once in my life. I can't imagine a December without snow.

25:23
I have always lived in a northern tier state, so there's usually at least a little bit of snow in December. It's so foreign to me to even consider the fact that you could have a warm day where you are on Christmas Day. I have seen many Christmases be 75 degrees and 100% humidity. Crazy. I can't, I have no concept.

25:51
I know that my granddaughter saw her first snow in October here, four Octobers ago, five Octobers ago, something like that when we moved to our place, because she grew up in Arizona. And so her mom and she and her dad, her dad is my stepson, long story, not going to get into it, but they came to visit and she was like eight, I think.

26:18
And at the very end of their visit, we had a day where it was very cold here in October. And it had been pouring rain and we were out running errands trying to get back before the temp dropped and it started to spit. And we rolled into the driveway just as it had started to snow and I still can't believe the look on her face. She was just looking up in the sky with her hands palm up. Like it's snowing and the grin on her face was just, I mean it ate her face.

26:46
She was so excited. That's great. Yeah, she's never seen it in Arizona, that's for sure. No, not where she grew up. She'd seen it in Nebraska, because that's where her other grandparents live. But it was just like a gift. She didn't expect to see snow in October here. So it was really fun. OK, so when people come to get their treat, they can buy a pre-cut one, or can they go cut one as well? Yeah.

27:16
We actually are what you would call a choose and cut farm. So directly behind the barn, there's about, I'll just say like give or take 10 acres of Christmas trees that they can walk through and pick out what they want. And we have all those different varieties. And we usually just tell people don't cut anything shorter than five foot. And you know, our prices are really actually,

27:44
very, very, very reasonable. I don't think we've ever changed our prices since we've been open, like in the last 40 years. Our trees are $8 a foot. So if you got a six foot tree, a little bit under 50 bucks, you know. Wow, that's amazing. That's fantastic. The only ones that we have to change are the furs because...

28:12
those, of course, the market continues to go up every year. But what we grow, I mean, it's very, very, very affordable, I would say, for someone that wants to get a nice, you know, I mean, and I don't want to brag, but I think, you know, after three generations of this, we've sort of figured out how to take care of a Christmas tree, you know, whether it's fertilizing, watering, or trimming.

28:42
You know, you're supposed to trim at certain times of the year, and there's certain parts of a Christmas tree that you trim at different times of the year. And there's really a lot to that. I'm not sure I could voice it all over, but there's something to do with moon cycles. We usually try to trim before full moon. We usually leave the top growing for a while to let the tree have something to sort of

29:11
reach out to, you know, to reach to the sun. And then at some point, we will cut that top and let it sort of fill out a little bit more, if that makes sense. Yes. And don't feel bad about feeling like you're bragging. My podcast is so that people can talk about the things that they love and that they're good at and that they are trying to do. So you want to brag, brag all you want. Okay. Thank you.

29:39
Yeah, I mean, it's an art form and you are you are making it go and you're making people happy and you're leaving the trees that you can affordable to people and nobody is doing that right now. Nowhere in any business. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the same thing with our fall festival. We opened up for our fall festival about 15 years ago.

30:06
And our price for entry was $10 at that time. And our price for entry is $10 today. So really everything that we can, we'll try to leave it the same, you know? Super. I love that. Because there are lots of people right now who just don't have the extra money to take their families to do something fun.

30:35
and your farm is fun and you're keeping it so that they can take their kids and do something that is a lifetime experience and memory. Yeah, and well, I mean, what we've noticed is that like, the more that we do that kind of thing, the more it pays off for us. So we may stay at the same price, but we see more people come and we grow more popular.

31:05
And we don't get, sure we've gotten a bad review here, there every business does, but I'm really proud of what our reviews look like. We're very close to completely five stars, you know? And I think we get a really good rapport in the community because of how we treat people, not only, you know, money-wise, but just being a family business. You know, we're a family and you wanna bring your family here.

31:34
And that's just the atmosphere that we tried. We're not trying to make a crazy amount of money doing this. This is just our lifestyle, you know? Yeah, and customer loyalty and word of mouth are the best ways for you to get more people to come. People to come back and then new people to come too. Oh, no doubt. Yeah, I mean, it's all about whether or not people have left here feeling like they got their money worth

32:04
Is it something that they would want to do again? And if that's the case, if both of those answers are yes, then they're going to go and they're going to talk about it and they're going to tell other people. And that's what we've seen. We just sort of trusting in the process and that is, um, you know, and, and doing everything we can in between, you know, um, sometimes you just have to, you just have to have faith with it. You know, sometimes we don't know when we're starting a new venture with strawberries, we just started that four years ago.

32:32
We had no clue if that would work. But all of a sudden we open up and then we see, whichever family has been coming to pick pumpkins with us or Christmas trees for the past however long, now they're coming out for strawberry season. So it's just a full circle thing. Very nice, I love that. I have one more question for you and then I'm gonna let you go. When people come out to do the events, to be at the events,

33:01
Is it totally cool for them to take photos with their cell phones and, you know, are there like photo opportunities for them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the farm has plenty of beautiful, you know, topography, rolling hills. The landscape out here is great for that. Obviously really big Christmas trees they can take photos in front of. We've got wild flowers on the farm, beautiful broom sage.

33:28
We actually just had someone come out and do a session yesterday. So sometimes people will come into a session, which we only charge $25 an hour to do a session and usually no one needs more than an hour. But if someone comes to our festival to answer your question, no, there's no problem at all, they could even bring their camera and take photos. We wouldn't charge them for anything like that. They've already paid the entry fee. So as far as we're concerned, they can go anywhere on the farm they want to go.

33:59
So it's a have-at-it policy is what you're saying. Yeah, it's a have-at-it policy. We definitely have insurance and we definitely try to take precaution and make sure people are as safe as they can because of course, you know, having a have-at-it policy does come with a little bit of, you know, maybe some safety measures. You just want to watch out for people. People that have never been on a farm may not realize, you know, the dangers of walking through very tall grass in the summer.

34:28
in Georgia, right? Yes. So, you know, but yes, we want people to feel like they are free when they come here, you know, and can do whatever they want, you know, in a sense, right? And that's how we feel and that's what we want to share, that feeling. Awesome. All right, Dan, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're at almost 35 minutes. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

34:59
Thank you, Mary. We appreciate it. Have a great day. All right, you too. Bye.