Inside UK's largest Christmas tree farm as it gears up for the festive season

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Toby here at Friesland Christmas Tree Farm. We're the UK's largest pick-your-own

00:04Christmas tree farm. That entitles you to come to the farm, you can have a walk around all of

00:10the fields and the plantations, you can either pick directly from the field and we'll cut the

00:13tree down for you, or you can pick out of our pre-cut retail area where we have roughly around

00:19about 300 trees on show at any time. The beautiful thing about being the pick-your-own is the fact

00:25that you get to come out, see the countryside, have a magical walk up our enchanted walkway

00:30and pick the freshest trees in the country realistically because we're cutting them down

00:35here for you. The average tree that you'll pick, six, seven foot Nordman, is around 10 years old,

00:41so when you are picking the trees you just have to remember how much time and effort we put in

00:46as they only grow for a very short period of the year, which is at the end of May into June for

00:52five to six weeks, and then for the rest of the year we're harvesting, looking after them,

00:58tagging them and trying to get them perfect for all of our lovely customers.

01:06I'm here now in one of the patches just looking at the difference in varieties,

01:10so this is a traditional tree as we would call it, this is a Norway Spruce,

01:13it does have the reputation that it drops more needles than a Nordman,

01:17which is technically true because it has more needles than a Nordman,

01:20but as long as they're cut fresh straight from the fields they are just as good in my eyes as

01:26a Nordman fir, I have had two Norway Spruces this year instead of a Nordman, this is what I'd always

01:31call is a tinsel tree because it's far tighter and the branches aren't quite as heavy and as

01:37strong as a Nordman fir which you get more of a layered tree with, but realistically

01:42choosing your Christmas tree, everything's in the eye of the beholder, so it's down to

01:48the customer to pick what they prefer and what they like and love and I suppose really the best

01:55thing and most beautiful thing about having the farm on our doorstep is the nature and the wildlife,

02:00but we were just looking at some Christmas trees in another plantation and a greater

02:05spotted woodpecker flew and landed in the tree next to us which was absolutely magical.