Later, I will introduce us individually, but for now I thought I’d explain what has brought us to this point in our life.

About 5 years ago, my father of about 80 or so, and I were talking about the 45 acres of land he owns debt free and how we should find some way for the land to pay the land taxes. As I was driving through Wyoming, looking at the windbreak trees along the interstate and commenting on how they looked like Christmas trees, inspiration sprung forth. After further research and discussion, we decided to start with 100 Virginia Pines each year for the next 5 years. It took a couple years to get things in motion and we now have 200 trees growing. We have discussed how to market the trees and have come up with a few ideas.

• Selling at the local Farmers Market.
• Set up at the annual Mistletoe Festival.
• Cut your own live tree here on the farm.

One side venture that has developed in this process is square hay bales. The field around the trees needed to be kept short, so we baled the grass into stackable square bales. We soon discovered we were filling a need for Horse, Goat, Sheep and Rabbit farmers. The large high-protein round bales that are more abundant around here are not fitting for the above-mentioned farmers or for those with limited hay storage space. Our square bales are a mix of less rich grass and stack easily in small spaces. Part of the Christmas Tree field contained a little too much broomsedge, so we have seeded the ground to Timothy/Orchard grass mix.

We will see what the future holds for us, but for now Hay is the product on the market and Christmas trees will be in a couple years.

The above was written about 4 years ago so we now have 400 trees planted and have picked up another 20 acres for hay crop.