04/27/2025
This week we had the pleasure of welcoming TWO groups out to our Christmas tree farm here in Sand Lake!
Wednesday we had the girl scouts out with Troop 8120 and Saturday, we had our 4-H group out "The Curious Clovers". Families learned about different ways Christmas Tree Farms are managed, and how we plan to manage ours a bit DIFFERENTLY, with a focus on regenerative farming, and a few new innovations!
We talked about how DANGEROUS mowing and w**d wacking can be for our young trees, and how we have tried various methods to mediate that, such as our GEESE, the endangered Pilgrim Breed, who work hard to keep our grass mowed and fertilized BUT still can cause a bit of damage with curious nibbling. Kids got to pet a gosling and see the geese up close as well as enjoy some snuggles from our farm turkey! They enjoyed a bumpy hay ride around the fields too!
Which brings us to our SECOND innovative idea . . . Luby, our automated lawnmower! Luby is designed to avoid obstacles and keep the grass TIDY - stay tuned to see how WELL it performs as we get ready to launch it this week!
We also met "Scotty", one of our MOST EXCITING accomplishments! Scotty was an experiment, a throwback to OLD SCHOOL christmas tree farming techniques long forgotten. It's a style of regenerative farming where you do NOT cut a whole tree down, but rather RECYCLE the stump into a NEW TREE. Only a handful of farms across the US are using this old method and we are excited to hopefully join the team!
Everyone learned about the various ways we work our trees, and the issues we have faced as growers.
Then, everyone got to work planting bareroot Frasier Fir trees into pre-dug holes. The Girl Scouts planted 50, and the 4-H families planted 160!
Each planted row will be marked with a sign noting it was planted by Curious Clovers 4H, or Girl Scout Troop 8120, so they can come back and SEE how their trees are doing next year!
Currently we have 500 trees in the ground this year with another 1250 to be done. This will total roughly 3500 trees across the farm total!
We hope to be open in about 3 more years!
