The Christmas-tree grower
GROWING Christmas trees came about fortuitously,' says Andrew Ingram of The Tree Barn in south Oxfordshire. 'I took over the family farm in 1970, in my early twenties -I'm 75 now and there was a hedgerow that needed thickening up, so we chose to do it with Christmas trees. We were a traditional farm with Jersey cows, but we couldn't compete with Friesians, so I had to sell the herd.
'I cast around for something else to do and noticed the trees were growing rather well, so I made the wise move of joining the British Christmas Tree Growers Association. Everything I've learned since that moment has been through them. I've been very fortunate. I found out I was on exactly the right soil type to grow them-free draining, slightly acidic and not in a frost pocket. I also happen to live in a place called Christmas Common and, if you can't sell Christmas trees from Christmas Common, there's something wrong with you!'
The Ingrams plant about 17,000 trees a year, of which they sell between 7,000 and 8,000 direct from the shop run by Mr Ingram's wife, Jane, together with hand-crafted decorations. They supply big display trees for London hotels and Oxford colleges and have provided the Downing Street tree three times.
'The ideal tree should have an almost perfect triangular shape,' Mr Ingram advises. 'It needs to be dense, with lots of branches, and the colour is important-you want a good, strong, dark green. When I started, we were growing Norway spruce, but the market has changed. Now, it's mainly Nordmann fir.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
