Holiday Wreaths

This year we decided to make holiday wreaths for our clients. I (Stef) was feeling a little nostalgic after not going home for Christmas for the past 3 years, (due to pandemic restrictions and flying with two toddlers, etc) so I wanted to do something that reminded me of home. I grew up on a Christmas tree farm in upstate NY, owned and operated by my (ironically) agnostic Nana. I used to help her decorate holiday wreaths for her customers and I thought it would be a fun way to connect with our own clients this year. Our holiday wreaths are Fraser Fir, locally sourced from a farm in Abbotsford, and decorated by yours truly.

Stef’s Family Tree Farm

As a kid, our house was on one end of the farm and my Nana’s home on the other, with the Christmas tree fields between the two properties. In the spring, I used to help my Nana prune the trees. Nana felt more at home among the flora and fauna than with people.  Always flanked by her German Shepards and menagerie of cats, she was a strange bird but as a kid she was so much fun. Her tree farm was her way of connecting with people, if only during the holiday season. She and my mom taught me the differences between blue and white spruce, concolor, Douglas, and Fraser fir trees. At Christmas time, my Nana and mom would make wreaths and I would help decorate them with berries, pussy willows, pinecones, and velvet ribbon fashioned into bows. I will never forget how to make these bows – I think I’ve made hundreds, held together by wire and attached to green, fragrant wreaths. I think one of Nana’s wreaths adorned every business in town. There was a huge one for my dad’s gas station, and two for the church doors. Customers would bring back the metal wreath hoops and sometimes even the ribbons to construct their wreaths for the following year. Maybe things weren’t as disposable back then…but I digress.

Every winter, before (American) Thanksgiving, clients would go out into the tree fields and tag their perfect trees. I made hundreds of trips into the fields, leading customers down the path, showing them the different types of trees, explaining the benefits of each. Fraser fir were hard to come by (and more expensive) as the deer liked to eat them. Concolors had sturdy branches, and held their needles. Blue and white spruce were pokey, if you asked pre-teen me. It was often a family affair with repeat customers for decades. Some families always bought blue spruce trees, others preferred the firs. Some families were competitive, ensuring they got to Tilly’s tree farm before their neighbours to tag their trees.  There was nothing worse than finding the perfect tree and then finding it had been tagged by someone else. It was a little like real estate. One regular customer always (half-jokingly) lamented that my grandparents bought their property out from under him. Dr. Tartaglia was to look at it the farm the following week, but my Peepa made an offer before he could get there. The property is beautiful – my parents and sister live there to this day. With views of the Albany, NY skyline, several ponds and streams, and evergreens all around, it really is a special place. If you happen to be in the Albany, NY area, check out Pond Hill Pavilion’s site for your next event.

Wreaths and Real Estate

The wreaths and Christmas trees sustained my Nana’s lifestyle (frugal, to say the least!), helped send me to University, and the property acts as our family home to this day. It is now an event venue with full pavilion, outdoor bar, dance floor, and gorgeous backdrop. My mom and sister are planting new trees and plan to resume Christmas tree operations that have ceased since my Nana’s death more than 20 years ago. The land has served 3 generations and has renewed purpose.

My mother, a land surveyor after her father, always taught me that in her experience, people are very attached to their land. Looking back on the memories of the tree farm, the current use of the family land, the things the land allowed us to do with our lives, one can see why. Owning real estate has been the greatest generator of wealth for Canadians and Americans for quite some time, but real estate can do so much more. It generates connectedness to a community. It creates opportunity in other ways. It acts as a space for work, play, and memories, serving as a back drop to our whole lives. The property that you choose depends on what you want to do with it, how you want to live, where you want to vacation. One home may be special or useful to someone and not to another for various reasons. And when you let a property go, when it’s sold, it’s because the benefits of the property have a different purpose than when it was purchased. We find all of this interesting and exciting, and we’re so glad we get to help people maximize the benefits of their properties every day. In our Holiday wreaths this year, we wanted to share a little bit of our home with our clients. We wish you a happy holiday season and a prosperous new year!