His laugh is quiet. ‘It’s not hidden away, it’s the fall of the harvest years.’ I must look at him blankly because he rolls his eyes. ‘You know the fields out front that are empty? Usually they’re full of Christmas trees too, but it just happens that Evergreene’s last harvest was from those fields. You cycle year on year. You plant a field one year and that’ll be mature in seven years’ time. The one you planted the previous year will be mature in six years’ time, and so on, until you’ve got a rolling stock of Christmas trees with a new batch ready every year. That system has got lost to the years of no maintenance and it’ll take a while to get it back into place again. One of the last things Evergreene did was replant those fields with saplings, but with no one looking after them, they were strangled by the weeds that have taken over. In the spring, your first job should be to dig over those fields and replant them. You’ll have to collect seed from your pinecones this winter, but the seedlings will be too small to plant direct. Evergreene prided himself on always growing from scratch and all his trees being of proper Peppermint Branches heritage, but the missing years have really set things back. A tree farm turns over year by year. One year relies on the next. Losing so many makes it almost like starting from scratch again.’

‘Tree heritage.’ I shake my head. I had no idea there was such a thing. ‘Do they have DNA tests? Ancestry.com for trees? Roots.com?’

‘Trees would be nothing without their roots.’

His voice is deadpan and his face doesn’t give anything away. I wait for him to start laughing, and when he doesn’t, I narrow my eyes at him. ‘Was that another tree pun?’

Finally, his mouth twitches at one side. ‘I don’t know, maybe I’m just branching out.’

I can’t stop myself giggling. He’s rugged and handsome, a typical broad-shouldered farmer, but some of the things that come out of his mouth are ridiculously adorable.

He stomps his boots into the grassy ground. ‘These are the Nordmann firs. Broad needles that retain water so they don’t drop, strong branches and soft foliage, and the needles have got a waxy coating so it’s the best tree for allergy sufferers.’

I’m kind of awed by the way he talks. His voice is deep and rough, but there’s a lightness to it when he talks like this. His eyes shine with passion, the colour of the trees reflecting to make them look closer to green than blue. I go over to the nearest tree and touch one of the lower branches. ‘Can I sell these this year?’