Christmas trees grow in the high elevations of western Maryland, not along the coastline of the Chesapeake, right? Wrong.
A few hundred feet off one of the busiest thoroughfares in Annapolis, down a winding dirt road and over the crest of a small hill stand ranks of spruces, firs and pines on 26 acres of what?s left of the Giffin family farm.
Robert Giffin, who spent most of his career in the U.S. Navy, now spends about 1,000 hours per year tending to the Masque Christmas Tree Plantation that his father started on what had been a working tobacco and dairy farm.
“People are always in a good mood picking out a Christmas tree,” Giffin said,surveying this year?s crop on an unusually warm late fall day.
Giffin said he has watched a solid base of loyal customers return year after year in search of the perfect holiday icon, some of them already on the second generation.
“I just enjoy being outside. It?s a nice way to escape,” said Giffin, who now works as a forensic investigator.
The farm traditionally opens the first weekend in December and is only open on the weekends; customers pick and cut their own trees. Giffin closes the farm down after a few weeks, in part to preserve his crop, but also to preserve the experience for his customers.
“I don?t want people to feel like things have been picked over,” he said.
Once the short sales season is over, Giffin digs up the stumps left by the old trees and will replant in the spring, though it takes about six years for his Pennsylvania-grown saplings to reach holiday heights.
Giffin?s grandfather, Vice Adm. Robert C. Giffin, was the director of athletics at the U.S. Naval Academy, and while he was deployed during World War II, Giffin?s grandmother kept the old farmland going. It was only after her husband died and she wasn?t able to sell the farm that Christmas trees entered the picture.
Giffin said the family reluctantly went along with his father?s idea of a Christmas tree farm, thinking the idea would fizzle out after a few years.
“During his best year he sold 2,600 trees,” Giffin said. “And on his best day he sold 600 trees.”
The farm, originally 155 acres strong, has dwindled in the past few decades and is now fenced in by Annapolis Middle School, a small single-family neighborhood and the headwaters of Crab Creek. Thanks to its already-established neighbors, there?s little to threaten the farm?s long-term survival other than the owner?s desire to keep it going. Giffin said his two college-age children have become reluctant accomplices in carrying on the family tradition.
“I?ll do it probably ?til I can?t do it anymore,” Giffin said.
