The year our wreaths went to the Executive Mansion. Then our trees did.
Two Christmases, one small farm in Floyd County, and the oldest governor’s residence in the country still in use.
An honor we did not see coming.
In the fall of 2022 the Virginia Executive Mansion asked us to make its Christmas wreaths. We tied them the way we tie every wreath, from Fraser Fir cut in our own rows, and drove them east to Richmond.
Hanging them on a house that has been home to Virginia’s governors since 1813 was a day none of us will forget. It was a pleasure to meet the Governor and First Lady, and the mansion staff who look after the place.
Official photo: Christian Martinez, Office of the Governor.
And what do you know? The tree, too.
The following year our Fraser Fir won the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association’s “prettiest tree” contest. With it came the invitation to bring the mansion its Christmas trees.
We walked the rows in October looking for the ones. Tall, full, dark green all the way around, the kind of tree you tag in year nine and leave alone. Three of them went to Richmond that December.
They were grown exactly like the tree you will cut on the farm this year: planted by hand, trimmed every summer for ten years, and cut the week they were needed.
From the rows in Floyd to the steps in Richmond.
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