By Clint Thompson
Christmas tree farms will soon be booming with families looking to brighten their homes with a tree for the holiday season. That includes Southern Hollow Christmas Tree Farm in Bay Minette, Alabama, located along the Gulf Coast.
Owner Joe Smith said the farm will open the weekend before Thanksgiving but expects the biggest crowd during Friday-Sunday after the holiday.
“That’s when you get your biggest push of that weekend. You get a lot of repeat customers and some years you won’t get somebody that was there the year before, but you get new people. It evens out,” said Smith, who like other Christmas tree farm owners, continues to tout live trees compared to artificial trees.
“I guess an artificial tree is easier. You just pop it out, and it’s done,” Smith said. “But there’s something about having a real Christmas tree, the experience of the cutting and taking it home and having to take care of it. This is just different. Plus, it’s just a different look, too, having a real tree.”
Smith said this is the fourth year of Christmas tree production since they purchased the farm.
“We bought the property and everything about four years ago, not for the Christmas tree farm, but for the property. We decided to keep the Christmas tree farm going,” he said. “When you’ve never done that before, it’s a big learning curve right at the beginning. But the people that owned it before us were a big help as far as telling us what to do and what not to do.”
One of those learning curves is how to overcome natural disasters, like Hurricane Isaias when it moved through the region on Oct. 9-10.
“We had about 150 trees that were leaning, so we had to go back and straighten up and repack the soil around them,” Smith said.
“It’s been a pretty good growing season. They didn’t grow quite as fast as we had hoped they would, but it’s been a good season overall,” he added.