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Many Texans enjoy visiting a Christmas tree farm—to pick out a tree, cut it down, and take it home.
The Pipe Creek Christmas Tree Farm in Bandera County, less than 30 minutes north of San Antonio on Texas Highway 16, is one of more than 200 such farms across Texas.
Douglas Hingst can be seen riding around the farm on his orange tractor through 6,000 bright green Christmas trees in neat rows on 10 acres. The tractor works the farm and pulls visitors on hayrides.
He said the Christmas tree farm was started by his father in 1991. His 95-year-old dad still comes out to help from to time. There is a tradition there.
"Tradition" is a word we heard a lot on the farm from customers and from Hingst.
"It's always good to see everyone, every year. We see the same people who come out here as children and now they bring their children out here," he said.
Customer Michael Hermann and his wife, both of San Antonio, drove up to the farm to pick out a tree and maybe return to a tradition started by his mother.
"She had come with us out here several years ago and helped us pick out a tree, so this is kind of the first time we've been back since that time. And she has since passed." he said.
And it may be the start of a new tradition for Tyler Aldridge of San Antonio. He says it was his first visit to a Christmas tree farm to cut down his own.
"With a fake tree there's a lot of manufacturing and a lot of bad things about the environment that goes into that. At least when it comes to a fresh Christmas tree, most of the time they are farmed, and you're not cutting down native populations."
Another tradition at the farm is longtime employee Andrew Bachman. He sticks trees on a shaker machine before he bundles them up for a ride home with a customer.
"We have to shake them just to get the dead needles or any, you know, pests out of it. Ants or anything like that. Last week, actually, I was shaking a tree for a customer, and an inactive hornets' nest fell out of that tree, and I almost took off running."
He has shaken out a few old birds' nests out of the Christmas trees too.
All of these traditions would not exist without another tradition — the replanting of a new tree for everyone cut down at the farm.
Hingst said the pine Christmas trees on the farm are started with seeds, while the cypress Christmas trees are propagated. The tiny trees are grown in a greenhouse for a year and then planted in a row at the farm.
He said it takes two or three years for the trees to reach three feet tall, but after that, they can grow two or three feet a year. Hingst said they need to be sheared a lot as they grow — to make them appear fuller.
He said the trees are sold for $15 dollars a foot with a six-foot minimum.
The farm also sells Christmas wreaths and Christmas ornaments.
