A white Christmas in Florida's warm climate might be a stretch, but families can keep another tradition alive — cutting their own Christmas tree.
“You aren’t getting some cookie-cutter, Home Depot, big-box experience,” said Matt Vallez, 30, who helps his father-in-law run the farm during the Christmas season. “You’re coming out to a family-owned, local business and cutting the trees yourself.”
Vallez, who normally works as a farrier in Levy County, comes to help out at Gibbs Christmas Tree Farm on weekends with his wife, Kelli, 31. They offer people the experience of going through the process of picking and cutting their own trees.
The farm has been in Citra, which is located about 16 miles north of Ocala and about 26 miles south of Gainesville, for 22 years The farm is open, rain or shine, from Friday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
When driving into the tree farm, the first thing people see is a field of about 3,000 vibrant, green Sand Pine trees that spans about six acres. Visitors meet with workers who set them up with a saw and a measuring pole. They can also choose to buy pre-cut Frasier Fir trees that are shipped from North Carolina.
They can pick any tree they want that is above five feet tall. The trees are priced by height, starting at $50 for a five-to-six-foot tree, with increasing prices for taller trees.
The most striking feature on the farm, even more than the rows of Christmas trees, is the atmosphere that can be summed up in one word — family. Families, both young and old, come together with smiling faces to participate in a holiday tradition.
“It’s so hard to find a Christmas tree farm with full, healthy trees,” said Lara Montgomery, 41, who drove from Gainesville with her husband Jason, 39, and son Ethan, 8. “We have been around the block with tree farms.”
The Montgomery family has been searching for a Christmas tree farm since Unicorn Hill Christmas Tree Farm shut down in Gainesville last year. Jason, who is currently finishing his master’s degree in business at the University of Florida, is originally from Michigan, and Lara is from Maryland, where Christmas tree farms are more common.
They wanted to find a Florida farm to continue their tradition of cutting down their tree with their son. Ethan and the family decided on a tree that he called “Chubby Tree.”
The owner, Mike Gibbs, 64, moved onto the 40-acre plot of land from Miami after his children were starting school for the first time. He researched what he could do with his land and was interested after learning about Christmas tree farming.
Gibbs, who works selling plastic containers to nurseries and greenhouses, described the farm as his hobby. During the rest of the year when the farm is not selling, he does the work himself.
“It’s all me,” said Gibbs. “I trim trees. I fertilize. That’s about it; they don’t take much but trimming.”
Gibbs enlists the help of family and friends to help out during the Christmas tree season and for planting.
One of those family friends is Bubba Cunningham, 24, who works as an electrical lineman and lives across the street from the farm. He has been helping out for the past five years and said that everyone who visits gets into the Christmas spirit.
“I come help out with the trees in exchange for him letting me hunt deer on his land,” said Cunningham.
Once visitors have their tree cut, they can bring it to workers or enlist their help if it is too much to carry alone. The tree will then be put in a shaker that will shake all of the dead needles off of the tree.
Workers will then put the tree through the netter. This will enclose the tree in a net to make travel easier before they load it onto the visitor’s car. People can see the whole process their tree goes through.
“The kids seem to really enjoy this over getting one that’s precut,” said Trey Ponce, 35, from Elkton, who works as a maintenance manager. “They like running around in between the trees and stuff.”
Ponce and his wife Georgia, 33, who works as a medical coder, brought their three sons, August, Luke, and Spencer, to pick out a tree for the second year in a row. They drove an hour but said giving their kids the experience was worth it to them.
Gibbs says the farm sells between 50 and 100 Christmas trees on a usual day.
“This is not the furthest we have gone to cut down a tree,” said Jason Montgomery. “But it is a place we will be coming back to.”