With fall leaves soon to be replaced with winter snowfall, Miller’s Family Farm in North Attleboro is hard at work preparing for what longtime owner Richard Miller says should be a busy holiday season.
“I find that this season is very similar to the COVID season. I think that in COVID, people were cooped up and we were literally swamped. We had a little over 700 pre-cut trees, and they were gone in a day and a half,” Miller said. “This year, we have a lot of calls about getting trees early.”
Massachusetts has around 450 Christmas tree farms across the state, according to the most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture. Rhode Island has roughly 60.
Miller and his wife have operated their farm part-time for the last 13 years. The rest of the year, he works on remodeling. But when October rolls around, Richard Miller said, they start preparations for Christmas. And once it gets to November, “it is definitely more than full-time.”
“We have people come anytime from the middle of November ‘til Christmas time to cut trees and do wreaths,” Miller said. “We have wreath classes that people come to do.”
On a recent day, Miller said he had just cut one of his largest trees.
“There’s so many different aspects of owning a Christmas tree farm that I never knew before we bought it,” Miller said, “We were just cutting down a 30- to 40-foot tree that is going to go to the town of Seekonk.”
He said the lighting ceremony for the tree will be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Miller said that the rest of the year isn’t a matter of closing up shop and waiting for winter. The trees he sells generally take 6 to 8 years to grow to maturity. And to ensure the trees make it to selling-age, Miller’s team needs to fertilize them, fight drought symptoms and keep deer from eating them when snowfall is thick.
“This year we managed to get in a little over 400 trees in the ground,” Miller said. He hopes eventually to plant 1,000 trees on the farm.
In addition to selling trees and hosting wreath-making workshops, the farm occasionally builds campfires for when they host Santa Claus wagon rides.
“The sparkle in the kids’ eyes, it’s just amazing when they see him. Some are a little afraid of him, but the majority of them go right up to him,” Miller said.
