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After an eventful month at Gower Fresh Christmas Trees, it is now nearing the end of May. Yesterday  a lovely rainy day which is soaking our Christmas trees especially the Fraser Fir and Nordman Fir, which are growing fast and sucking up plenty of nutrients and water. It’s been a great month for selling some of the wholesale Christmas trees we have available. I think the demand for the British Christmas tree is increasing with every single year especially the Fraser Fir, which gets more popular every year.

This year the trees have produced literally millions of seed rich cones, which is due to the stress they went through with last year’s drought, nature is great in this way, ensuring more seed is available. As you can see from the pictures they are very impressive.

The problem of course is customers need the trees cone free, so for the last month we had a team of hard working staff de-coning them. We will leave some trees with the cones on as they look gorgeous and actually when we won the British Christmas Tree Grower of the year award it was with a tree with the cones on.

We are very proud with our top quality, beautiful trees. We work hard to trim and shape them, weeding, fertilising , straightening and spraying, etc. We are also very proud with the carbon footprint our trees leave. Growing over 400,000 trees we leave no footprint , where as imported trees leave a massive carbon footprint due to the hundreds of miles they have to travel. So, bottom line is buy local, come to us and you won’t be disappointed.

Besides the trees and the hard work going into tending to them this month has been very busy with the reindeer, which we take great pride in here at Gower Fresh Christmas tree,. I’m sure you have already seen a lot of our our Facebook posts and videos updating you on the progress of the births of the new babies. This year we have 11 new additions to the herd, which is great news. I am personally very relieved as I worry about each and every one when they give birth, as the mothers are distraught if they loose their calf. Reindeer are one of the most loyal and protective animals I’ve seen give birth at the farm, nature at its greatest. At the moment the herd is all happy and calves fit and strong, although there is a new star at Gower Fresh besides Dave the dog!!!

Sadly one of the mums, who is a bit flighty, same as her mum prior (inherited the trait, I guess), so as a first-time-mum, as much as she had the instincts to have a calf and nurture she struggled. Firstly, her calf was coming out breeched (backwards), I had to intervene and pull it out. Having pulled thousands of animals out in my time, mainly sheep, you get used to it, especially when it’s life or death situation. The calf came out fine but the mum got stressed and confused and took off. Usually, don’t like intervening as sometimes it can disrupt the bond, but in this case the mum and the calf wouldn’t have survived, so basically Buddy- the reindeer star, the baby, needed fostering.

The first 48 hrs were critical he stayed in my house under the close watch of my son’s cats. Slowly, bringing him up to strength with heat and 2 hourly feedings, after 48hrs Buddy was already calling and walking around my kitchen. It was tiring yet rewarding to see him so strong and happy. He is about 10 days old now, being fed still every three hours. He is like my shadow, following me around the farm, skipping and playing, we are slowly integrating him back into the herd. He will be the star next Christmas as he is so tamed, we now call him Buddy- the reindeer star.

Buddy’s story got some traction in the media as well. You might’ve watched on iTV Wales Kelsey reporting from Gower Fresh on the story. I’ve gotta say Buddy loves the camera and the attention.

Nearly time to sign off, a very busy month at Gower Fresh Christmas Trees, tomorrow we have 16,000 pumpkin plants being delivered ready for our Halloween extravaganza, which will be massive and the biggest in South Wales.

From me, Dave and Buddy-the reindeer star, see you soon.