‘Aye, but I like it that way. The seasonal growing business isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of year-round maintenance, but you only get an income generally once a year. It can be a shock at first, especially when you’re used to the nine-to-five guaranteed monthly paycheque. Personally I’m lucky because my dad started Roscoe Farm long before I was born, so it’s had over forty years to build up a reputation. I also got lucky because I made the call to give a few fields over to pumpkins at exactly the time when Halloween started to get as popular here as it is in America, and British people started wanting to visit pumpkin patches like Americans always have. Sometimes in this business you make calls that are wrong, and sometimes you get it right. I’ve taken plenty of wrong turns along the way too.’ He glances over at me and his eyes flick quickly back to the road.

It makes me think about what I’ll have to do to stay in business. Noel obviously works hard to make sure things tick over throughout the year. What on earth am I going to do to make Christmas trees earn a living in any month outside of December? ‘What did Evergreene do to survive all year round?’

‘I hate to say it but he didn’t need to. Peppermint Branches was loved far and wide, it was extraordinarily profitable in the later years. He had a massive wholesale contract that was worth a fortune and turned over a huge amount of stock each year, and he spent the non-Christmas season looking after the trees.’ He taps his nose and puts on the deep, strongly accented voice of an elderly Scottish gent. ‘The more you put into a crop, the more you get out of it, my boy.’

I smile at the impression but it doesn’t ease the knot in my stomach. The wholesale contract is obviously long gone and my current crop of trees wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting anything similar. ‘What about growing something else? You grow and sell other things outside of pumpkin season, right?’ He nods but my mind’s already whirring. ‘Strawberries? They could grow in the shade between the trees, and they’d be long gone by the time the farm opens.’

‘Depends how much time you’ve got to waste planting and caring for a crop that aren’t Christmas trees, and how many you’d have to grow to make a profit.’

‘If there were enough, I could open the farm as a pick-your-own in the summer too … Oh! Opening the farm in the summer!’ I nearly spill my coffee as I sit up straighter and the idea bubbles into life. ‘Christmas in July is a thing, right? I could do something festive at that time of year. Meet Santa in the summer for a riverside picnic or something?’