‘We bring hip flasks and toast the tree’ Now that’s what you call a family tree!
How four generations grew up with a Scots business that sold only seven Christmas trees in its first year but now supplies more than 50,000 every December
IT is early December and a convoy of family cars bursting with festive spirit is bouncing cheerfully up the rutted rural track towards Wester Auchentroig Farm.
Having parked up, four generations of one family – aged from 86 to 18 months and dressed in wellies and thick winter coats – head off into a neighbouring field brimming with Nordmann firs and Norway spruces, determined to find and chop down the perfect centrepiece for their seasonal celebrations.
Far from being chased away for such acts of wanton vandalism, they are greeted like old friends by the farmer, who even hands out razor-sharp saws, protective gloves and a small piece of carpet to aid them in their quest.
And quite right too; after all, members of the Pollock and Cowan clan have been toppling firs at his farm, near Buchlyvie, Stirlingshire, ever since Euan Duff began offering his bespoke ‘cut your own Christmas tree’ service three decades ago. More than that, it was they who initially gave him the idea for his hugely successful ‘choose and chop’ promotion.
‘The Pollocks and Cowans were among our first customers and have come back every year since,’ the farmer said. ‘It was really they who invented our “choose and cut” service. They came to us and decided they didn’t like the look of the trees we had cut, I think because they were too small, and asked if they could pick their own one out.
‘We said by all means. The idea was born and we never looked back. We now have many other families who have been coming for years.’
For Margaret Pollock, her twin sister Liz Cowan, 64, and their respective husbands Bill, 62, and Alan, 68, the hour-and-a-half drive from their home town of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, and the cutting of Christmas trees is now a firmly-rooted annual tradition. And as the business at Buchlyvie Christmas Tree Farm grew, so too did the burgeoning family of its most loyal customers, until 19 relatives rocked up for this year’s tree-felling.
‘That first year we came, it was just the four of us,’ said Bill Pollock. ‘We used to go up to the Forestry Commission place in Aberfoyle to get a sustainable tree but one year we saw a sign to Euan’s place.
‘They were so good about letting us cut our own that we came back the next year, and the next.
‘We always take hip flasks and when somebody picks a tree and cuts it, the non-drivers will toast the tree with a nip. On our way home, we’d stop at the Kirkhouse Inn in Strathblane for dinner. It ended up becoming an annual pilgrimage.
‘As the kids started to arrive, they would come along too and so the group has grown. This year, we took away eight trees in total.’
This year’s party included Mr Pollock’s 86-year-old mother-in-law, Helen McCrorie, and his sons, Russell, 34, Gordon 32, and 23-year-old Stewart. His sister-in-law’s children, Greig Cowan, 39, and Gillian Craig, 36, have also been coming since they were babies and now bring their own children.
At 18 months, Greig’s son, Blair Cowan, is the latest member of the gang. Perhaps there is some truth to the pagan belief in winter evergreens as a symbol of fertility.
The tradition has become so strong that no one wants to miss out. Mr Pollock, an engineer, is based in Berlin but comes home at weekends.
He said: ‘Russell is a teacher on Islay and came over specially for it this year. My nephew Greig is a physicist and used to work at CERN in Geneva, but always flew back. Everybody just wanted to make it, because we have a big family dinner and catch up, so it’s a lovely day out.
‘There are probably Christmas tree farms nearer home but we wouldn’t go anywhere else now. A guy called Donnie Beaton worked for Euan for years and once our kids started coming along, he would pull them in a trailer behind his quad bike with the trees and drive us back to the car park. You’d be hanging onto the trailer and each other and be bounced around. It was fantastic fun for the kids. You probably couldn’t do it now because of health and safety.’
He added: ‘I would hope our children and grandchildren will continue the tradition after us.’
There was a time, of course, when the main Scottish holiday was Hogmanay rather than Christmas and far fewer of us bothered with a tree at all, until the intervention of another family, the noblest of them all. Britain’s first official Christmas tree was brought to Windsor Castle by Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, in 1800, but it was the trees ordered in the 1840s by Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, that popularised indoor trees in the UK.
For Mr Duff, now 64, family backing was vital in growing the farm from modest beginnings to a 440-acre operation, with up to half a million trees planted at any one time. Around 90 per cent of the business is commercial sales, with about 50,000 trees sent to supermarkets and large garden centres each winter, mainly in southern England.
Mr Duff’s parents, Stewart and Joan, originally bought the land in 1959 to farm sheep and cattle. ‘My father ran a haulage rental business in Stirling, but fancied himself as a gentleman farmer,’ he said.
‘We were quite a large family – I was the second eldest among four sisters and a brother and we all had dogs and horses and so on.’
Beyond the trees, the views northwards across the Trossachs to Ben Ledi and west to Ben Lomond are spectacular.
The location imbued Mr Duff, newly graduated from agriculture college in 1977, with ideas to diversify and expand the farm.
‘My grandfather was still alive then and was a forester with a smallholding in Dunblane, where he grew Christmas trees as a hobby. He got me started,’ he said.
It takes at least six or seven years for trees to grow large enough for cutting so it was 1988 before the farm could start trading. ‘We sold seven trees that year, which we had pre-cut and stored in our garage,’ he said.
Undaunted, he and wife Flick, 54, ploughed on, steadily increasing the plantation. Both their sons, Dougie, 26, and Sandy, 23, now work there full-time. Retail sales have grown by 10 per cent year on year, with about 80 per cent of customers opting to cut their own.
Mr Duff charges £40 for a 6ft tree and double that for a 9ft one. The cut trees can be netted by machine and in the back of the car in minutes. ‘We’ll sell about 1,500 trees to retail customers in the run-up to Christmas,’ he said. ‘Some are looking for a
Nordmann fir, a Fraser fir or the traditional Norway spruce. Nordmann are by far the most popular – better needle retention, a lovely shape and a nice scent.’
The fragrance of a freshly cut tree is part of the allure. In a survey of the nation’s favourite smells, Christmas trees came eighth just behind the sea but ahead of perfume. At Mr Duff’s farm the fresh firs mingle with the aroma of festive food and drink sold by pop-up catering outlets in the car park.
Mrs Duff also sells home-made jams and mince pies and enjoys the sociability of the weekends.
‘I don’t get involved with running the business,’ she said. ‘My job is to feed the workers and keep them happy.’
For her husband, it all signals the heady scent of success. ‘About 2004, the price of trees collapsed and we thought about giving up, but didn’t,’ he said.
The gamble paid off so spectacularly that Mr Duff switched focus completely from animal rearing to farming trees.
‘The last cattle left about eight years ago and now it’s all trees apart from a few fields of grass which my neighbour kindly puts some animals on. We are now probably the biggest Christmas tree farm in the area.’
Mr Duff doesn’t miss the early starts and late nights that livestock demand, but points out that trees require similar year-round nurturing to flourish.
‘We start in April with planting new plants when the ground is ready,’ he said. ‘We buy our plants from a wonderful nursery in Denmark when they are a foot high and four years old, having spent two years in a propagator and two years in a nursery.
‘Then we will spray them, add fertiliser and we are constantly pruning to keep a nice shape whenever we have a spare moment. In July we start a second application of fertiliser.
‘In August the all-important business of labelling the trees for size and quality begins; it’s a subjective thing based on experience. Labelling carries on right up until December.
‘We also start to get a constant stream of buyers coming to see what we are doing, through September and October.
Preparing the trees for our commercial customers will take us through to early December when we start to welcome the retail trade.’ He explained that Denmark is regarded as the world leader in tree growing and tree harvesting technology, while Scotland enjoys the ideal climate for growing Christmas trees.
‘Our winters aren’t too severe, our summers aren’t too dry. For the west of Scotland, this year’s summer was ideal. We got a splash of rain when we needed it and long sunny days,’ Mr Duff said.
‘But is has been too dry for growers down South and the death rate of their plants has been around 75 per cent. They have had to do a lot of replanting.’
It is a testament to the quality of his trees that Mr Duff’s company was asked to provide four 15ft trees for the Tower of London this year.
‘They look pretty great – they’ve outshone the London Eye,’ he exclaimed triumphantly.
Meanwhile, a Scottish-grown fir will adorn another famous London address after John Junor, of Farr North Christmas Trees, Invernessshire, won a competition to provide a 20ft tree to stand outside 10 Downing Street.
It is no great surprise to find that the Duffs are advocates of real trees over artificial ones. Tree growers point to figures from the Carbon Trust, which estimates that a 2m [6ft 6in] artificial tree has a carbon footprint ‘more than ten times that of real trees that are burnt’.
‘I don’t know anyone who prefers a fake tree to the real thing,’ Mr Duff said. ‘The whole family gathering round a real tree at Christmas; what could be better than that?’