Tree farm 10 years in the making hopes to start a tradition for families
And you may have thought Christmas was taking forever to get here.
A Medicine Hat family has waited almost a decade to get their planned Christmas Tree farm off the ground, but with now nine-year-old spruce and pine trees ready for sale, the Country Mouse U-Cut tree farm opens its gates today.
The family’s acreage — located on Range Road 61, two kilometres south of Township Road 120 — is open this Friday and Saturday for families looking to cut down their own tree as a Yuletide outing.
“We’re trying to build a good, home-town Christmas tradition for people — we have a huge extended family and we’re big into Christmas” said Erika Bodnaruk, an owner of the family business along with husband Gerald.
The whole idea travelled with the couple when they arrived in Medicine Hat in the late 1990s from Manitoba, but only took root when the family moved south of the city about 10 years ago.
“We’ve been here for 20 years, and when we bought the parcel, we saw a market for (a tree farm),” said Erika “It’s sort of an idea from the east, where there are lots of tree farms. We wanted to fill the void.”
The family started planting trees in 2008 and each year has added more. After the 2017 crop is cleared, seedlings set for sale in 2026 will go in next spring.
It’s been work, year in, year out for the Bodnaruks, who hope Hatters will also make coming out an annual family tradition.
The farm, at 11415 Range Road 61, is open from 5-8 p.m. on Friday night, then 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
“Come out and get the tree, get a picture, take a hayride, have a hot chocolate; it’s a whole experience,” said daughter Logan Bodnaruk.
About 80 white or blue spruce along with some pines trees are available this year. If they don’t sell out this weekend, additional sale days will be scheduled.
Customers are required to bring their own saw (power tools are not allowed).
As for starting a nursery in a dry prairie, as it turns out the irrigated parcel is wellsuited for growing trees and next spring the first offering of landscape trees available from the nursery.
“We always wanted to buy an acreage and wound up with 27 acres,” said Erika Bodnaruk. “It’s kind of a small parcel and hard to work on with big machines. So we decided on U-cut. It’s a desert and we thought it would be fun to try.”