Collegiate Times

Trees center

Clusters of red, orange and yellow speckled the distant mountains. The changing seasons drained the deciduous forests of their pulse, yielding a sea of barren brown.

Yet the air swelled with life as David Huffman strolled through his property, which boasts endless rows of fragrant Christmas trees. They flexed strong limbs with vivid shades of green.

He asked me to smell the needles of a Concolor Fir and guess the scent. I couldn’t pinpoint it.

“How about tangerine?” he asked.

Huffman owns Spruce Ridge Tree Farm in Newport, which is a 20-minute drive from Blacksburg on U.S. 460 West.

He maintains the 30 rolling acres almost entirely by himself, and the responsibilities aren’t only when sleigh bells start to ring. Huffman tends to the expansive crops nearly year-round to ensure his fall offering looks and performs its best.

After leaving a job with a Roanoke lumber company in 1989, Huffman chose to pursue a familiar hobby. Both his brother and an uncle once worked on Christmas tree farms, and Huffman decided to extend the tradition.

In 1991, he planted an initial three acres of trees on land owned by his wife’s parents.

“I plant them all by hand,” Huffman said. “There’s no machines.”

With approximately 1,500 trees per acre, Huffman must have sensed his endeavor wasn’t fleeting.

Since the inception, Huffman said he’s typically added 3,000 to 4,000 trees annually. The most he’s ever sown is 8,000. He’s also introduced more than 10 species, and he orders the seeds from around the U.S., including Indiana and Michigan.

Huffman even grows some of what he knows won’t be a commercial hit.

“You can’t sell a Scotch Pine from here to the Mississippi,” he said. “But you get above the Mason-Dixon line, they go bananas over it.”

Both retirees, Huffman and his wife Dreama have a century-old house adjacent to the farm, but they actually call Roanoke home. Huffman commutes from the city to care for the farm when it’s needed, which is often.

“I come up here about the middle of March and start planting,” he said.

Once summer flourishes, Huffman’s farm duties peak. The trees become almost a dawn-to-dusk effort.

“You just don’t stick them out there and up they come,” he said.

Huffman routinely mows the grass around and between the trees. It makes traversing the terrain easier, and Huffman said he doesn’t have to worry about surprises such as hidden snakes.

For young trees, Huffman sprays Roundup Weed and Grass Killer around their bases.

“If not, your grass is going to grow right on up through,” Huffman said, “and your tree’s not going to be any good except (starting) two feet from the ground.”

Huffman said he also circles each tree with fertilizer. Toting a backpack with a roughly 50-pound capacity, he’ll spread three to four tons total.

The only aid Huffman receives is for tree trimming and stump removal. He said about 20 workers from Floyd visit the farm bearing machetes for sculpting or shovels for digging.

Despite all the measures to ensure a handsome product, Huffman loses a fraction of trees to ruthless foes.

A soilborne pathogen from the genus Phytophthora causes some trees to yellow and wilt. Hungry deer are Huffman’s largest concern, for they shear trees down like ears of corn, leaving a patchy trunk behind.

“You just hope somebody will shoot enough of them to stay away,” he said.

The few branches they don’t chew, though, are given to Mrs. Huffman to assemble Christmas wreathes.

While Huffman mourns the occasional pine’s passing, he’s had several trees evoke celebration.

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