I farm: “100ac of Christmas trees with my wife, Kathleen, and children, Niamh and Connor. Niamh works with me full-time doing the Christmas trees, I’d be lost without her. Connor is in college, but helps out when he’s home. We have the third generation here; my mother and father started growing trees in 1952.”

Harvest: "We are in the middle of harvest at the minute, we started two weeks ago. It has been tough with the wet weather, but we’re working around it. We could harvest up to 1,200 trees a day.”

Planting: “We grow our trees from seed, we’re the only dedicated Christmas tree nursery in Ireland. We plant them around February and at this stage the tree going into the ground is already three or four years old. They need another eight to 10 years before they can be harvested.”

Market: “There’s definitely a growing market for real Christmas trees. We supply Aldi Ireland with their Christmas trees and also Tesco in Northern Ireland, The Range and Homeland stores. I also export trees to the UK because they can’t grow Noble fir over there, the soils are too chalky. We’re blessed here with our climate and soils, it’s ideal for growing Noble fir.”

Diversify: “I would love to see young farmers diversify and start growing their own few acres of Christmas trees. There’s a huge export market there to tap into. We could export another hundred thousand trees to the UK if we had them.”

Growing season: “It has been a very healthy growing season for trees this year. They’re fantastic and so green. We actually had to delay harvest slightly in order for them to get a bit of frost – it helps to make the trees dormant and for the sap to go down in them.”

Price: “People can come and pick out their trees here from the farm store, or I also sell them at Leopardstown racecourse. They’re retailing at between €8 and €12 per foot. It all depends on the quality of the product.”