‘I never thought Peppermint Branches would run as a Christmas tree farm again. I was certain it would go to a property developer who would flatten it and re-use the land. I intended to make a deal with the new owner to buy this field in exchange for a good chunk of cash or a different part of my adjoining land. Anything to stop these trees being destroyed.’

‘Oh. Okay, I suppose we can still do that …’ I start, trying not to sound as disappointed as I feel.

‘No way,’ he says quickly. ‘That was only my plan if it sold to someone who was going to destroy it. You’re running this place as a tree farm, so these are yours now. I was only an interim caretaker. Just try not to kill them.’

I laugh at his offhand tone. ‘No pressure then.’

He doesn’t laugh. ‘I’m sorry about the trespassing. It’s terrible, and if anyone had known I was doing it, or caught me in here, they wouldn’t have been so understanding.’

Either I’m missing something or I just don’t get what the big deal is. ‘The land wasn’t mine then. It wasn’t anybody’s. These trees are beautiful, and obviously important, you weren’t doing anything wrong by keeping them alive.’

His shoulders drop as relief visibly floods through him, and he smiles for the first time since I opened the gate.

The tree I’m standing next to must be roughly seven foot high because I have to look up to see the tip. ‘How old are these?’

‘This one is six years,’ he says without needing to read the label that’s tied around a low branch. ‘But they vary. Each row was planted at a different time. The oldest ones are eight and the youngest ones are toddlers at three.’

‘Do they scream a lot and refuse to eat their vegetables?’

This time he does laugh, a warm rumbling sound that makes me grin as he points out the younger trees, each row shorter than the one before. It looks organised and professional. The moss is green and plush and the trees themselves have an unusual eye-catching colour, the traditional dark green but with an underside of a lighter greyish-blue that makes you want to stop for a closer look, and it’s all about a million miles from the hotchpotch of dead trees I saw when I drove in. In comparison, the Nordmann fir fields look like an overgrown forest, and it makes me realise how much work I’ve got to do to get the rest of the fields looking anything like this, and I haven’t even seen the balsams and spruces yet.