Christmas Tree Farms Are Cropping Up in Area
By Linda Mcnatt, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Dec. 9–ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY — Before her husband’s job moved them to Hampton Roads in 1997, Kim Pugh was a nurse at a hospital near Philadelphia.
These days, she’s nursing grapevines and Christmas trees on a 28-acre farm near the James River, just outside Smithfield.
After a lot of research and a look into Virginia’s wine industry, Pugh and her husband, Allen, decided on the combination of grapes and Christmas trees.
This year, they harvested and sold their first crop of grapes — mainly to vineyards — and the tree business is open for its first real selling season — on weekends until Christmas.
“We knew nothing about any of this when we started,” Pugh said. “We’ve done a lot of reading and research.”
According to the Virginia Department of Agriculture, there are about 1,600 small farms across the state growing Christmas trees. About 1.7 million trees are expected to be harvested in Virginia this year.
There are plenty of tree farms in the western part of the state, but more and more farms are popping up in Hampton Roads.
In addition to the Pughs’ new farm, there’s a new tree farm in Suffolk, Santa’s Forest and Nursery, on Carolina Road.
“We’re seeing a small increase of young, new growers all over the state,” said Sue Bostic , president of the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association. “Many of them start with an acre or less and experiment. It’s exciting to us to know that the industry has new growers coming into it.”
The Pughs — who dubbed their farm Summer Wind Vineyard after the Frank Sinatra song and the breezes that blow from the river — planted 500 of several varieties of trees in the beginning. Some of the varieties didn’t make it, but the eastern white pines have done well. It’s taken five years for the tree business to take off.
“This summer, I was out here watering these little trees almost every day,” Pugh said.
“Some of them didn’t make it, but most seem to be doing fine.”
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