Oh Christmas Tree, you are our family’s tradition

The youngest generation of Hutton-Loyd Tree farmers, pictured from left are Joe Frazier, Zikomo Keck, Otis VanMeter, and Lina Loyd, greet customers at the tree stand.

With a passion for agriculture and the opportunity to purchase a few acres of land, Herb Loyd, created a family business that has helped make the holidays merry and bright for the past three decades.

“Our farm got its start because my father is passionate about agriculture and simply wanted to own and run a farm as the obvious outlet for that passion. He grew up in Charleston, West Virginia in a lower- middle-class family with agricultural roots. His exposure to agriculture through his own father and extended family are what germinated that passion in himself. But his life followed a winding path. He is intellectually gifted, and was the first in his family to attend college, graduating from WVU with a degree in zoology, of all things. But then he joined the Air Force during Vietnam as the back-seater in F-4 fighter jets that flew front-line missions. He developed an interest in physiology and this grew into a general interest in medicine. So, after the Air Force, he attended medical school and became a doctor. Once established as an emergency room physician dad decided to buy some land, so he could satisfy his agricultural cravings. Before too long, around 1980 he found the valley that became Hutton-Loyd Tree Farm. It was perfect, beautiful and isolated, with a lake both gracing and guarding its mouth and a small knob from which one can look out across the entire valley. He paid full asking price for that first piece of land, a choice that would become a trend with my Dad, who came to be known as “Doc” to the locals. He wanted to see the area and the people in it prosper. Over the years, he added bits and pieces of the surrounding property to his original purchase, bringing the farm to the approximately 1200 acres it is today,” Parke Loyd said.

In the early stages, Herb didn’t exactly know what he was going to plant until another farmer suggested a tree farm.

“Dad bought the land without a crop in mind, but soon another Kentucky farmer, Pete Kovalic, suggested he grow trees. So, he did, and he went big, planting thousands of trees to market wholesale. Word got around and, before long, locals began showing up around Christmas time to ask if he’d mind if they cut a tree. Of course, he agreed, and soon this grew into a choose and cut business of its own and established a tradition for our family that has endured for decades. Many of the children of our first customers are now bringing their kids. It is this, more than anything else, that motivates us to keep putting the time and money into the tree farm to keep this tradition alive. The Christmas business has never been profitable. It has gotten close some years, but every year the shortfall has been made up from my Dad’s own income and his desire to keep the tradition alive,” Parke added.

Parke, along with his sisters, Haley and Tara each agree that growing up on a tree farm has shaped their own lives.

“The farm completely changed mine and my sisters’ childhoods from what they otherwise would have been, both due to the Christmas business but also the growing of landscaping trees. Many doctor’s children might grow up forever in the bubble of the well-to-do. To be sure, we have been very privileged children, but we did not inhabit that bubble. While the families of many of our friends sought beach chairs or ski lifts over spring break, we went to the farm to help plant trees. As the youngest child, my small hands were often put to work correcting any seedlings that didn’t get placed quite right by the mechanical planter, leading me to have my hands in the dirt all day and causing the skin to split down the sides from their resulting dryness. During the Christmas season, we went up to the farm every weekend, beginning on Thanksgiving. We’d share our Thanksgiving meal in the little run-down house that we use as the office for selling trees, getting ready for the rush of customers that would arrive the next day. Our father paid us for our labor, and, after the season was over, we used our earnings to buy each other Christmas presents. We would show up every Monday at school with the skin of our hands and forearms dark and sticky from sap, with constellations of red dots from the pricks of sharp needles. Each of us developed specialties over the years. Tara, the oldest, could create beautiful wreaths with seemingly no effort. Haley, the youngest of the girls, learned to coax our ungainly garland machine into producing the greenery-roping at an astounding rate. Towards the end of the season, when sales slowed down, we would get into exactly the kind of mischief you’d expect of children on a farm. I can remember piling hay bales below a door out of the loft of one of our barns so that we could jump out into them. In the spring, when we could escape from planting trees, Haley and I would spend hours turning over rocks in the creek to see what fantastic creatures might be hiding under them. In the summer, we would plunge into a watering hole and see how long we could stand the feeling of the little fish nibbling at our skin,” Parke said.

Today the tradition continues as Herb’s children step into their father’s footsteps to run the family farm.

“And now, somehow, decades have passed. My dad, who is about to turn 72, is slowly retiring from farm work. Tara, Haley, and I have all grown up and have fallen into exactly the types of diverse and adventurous careers you’d expect of children exposed to a father, a farm, and a life like ours. I have become an astrophysicist, having received my PhD in August and begun my first gig as a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona. Haley has held tight to the roots the farm built, surveying trees and fighting fires for the Kentucky Department of Forestry and living only 20 min from the farm. Tara is a bona-fide world-saver. She’s the co-CEO of PIVOT, a non-profit organization devoted to building a healthcare system in rural Madagascar that can fight the easily curable diseases, like the recent outbreak of pneumonic plague, that harry the farmers of that region. After living in Alaska and several African countries, she’s now home in Lexington. Both Haley and Tara have a toddler and an infant each, yet still manage to hold-down their jobs and run a Christmas tree business. Because of the many locals with traditions on the farm, and because of the little ones in our extended family that we want to expose to the same incredibly nurturing experiences we benefited from, the three of us are banding together to “keep the dream alive.” Because we all have demanding jobs, and 2/3 of us have young children, we have had to scale back, but we’re keeping the core piece of the business, the part that makes it so valuable to our and other families, the experience of spending time together outside, wandering fields of trees. So, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to keep planting trees, keep caring for them, and keep opening our fields on the weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas so that tradition can continue,” Parke said.

While most aspects of the family business will remain the same, there have been a few slight changes as Herbs children work toward keeping their family tradition of operating tree farm alive.

“When our dad began to talk about retirement, we wondered, could we let the Christmas tree business go? Last year, Tara and Parke traveled home and joined Herb and Haley at the farm over Thanksgiving, so we could all remind ourselves what it is like to run the Christmas tree business together for a weekend. The familiar faces and familiar feelings made it clear: we can’t let this business go without a fight. The togetherness the farm brings our family, and so many other families that buy trees from us, is too special. Thus, Tara, Haley, Parke, and Herb’s second wife Renata will be picking up the torch to carry on the business. But we face a challenge: the farm has never made a profit. Herb always made up the deficit himself from his own earnings as an emergency room doctor. We, his children and wife, will not have that luxury. None of us have chosen careers so highly paid. To make continuing the business possible without burdening ourselves with debt, we’re moving to a family-only business model. This means that our families will provide nearly all the labor to keep the Christmas tree business afloat. We will plant, care for, and sell the trees all ourselves. But to do this, we must simplify the business. We each have lives filled with jobs, childcare, and hobbies of our own, and free time is hard to come by. To make things simpler, we are going to confine the business to only Christmas trees. This means we have to abandon the wreaths and swags; products that were extremely labor intensive to produce. Although we know this will inconvenience some customers, our hope is that these changes will allow the farm to continue to grow as a true family business, so that families can keeping coming to make memories there together for decades to come,” Parke explained.

Parke went on to add, “We’re already getting prepped for this year’s Christmas Season! We will have hot chocolate, s’mores, hayrides, and a bell hunt (but just for the kids this year, no ornaments full of money for the adults). In addition to trees, we will sell garland since that is hard for people to find elsewhere, but no wreaths or other greenery decorations. We will also have some accessories like tree stands, some awesome HL Tree Farm “Grown in Kentucky” shirts, and some consignment items from local artisans like honey and wooden snowmen. Here’s the important info: We’ll be open 10-5 Sat and 12-5 Sun the weekends of 11/25, 12/2, and 12/9, plus 10-5 on Black Friday Nov. 24.

We’ll be hiding ornaments in the trees for kids to find! If they find one, they get to pick a small toy gift.

We have a new number: (859) 474-0287. We usually can’t answer calls during the day, but on our open weekends we will respond to voicemails by the next day. Also, you can text it! We should be able to respond to texts faster”.

So, while Santa is making his list and checking it twice, make plans to create some special memories and family traditions of your own with a visit to Hutton-Loyd Tree Farm.

The farm is located at 644 Christmas Tree Road, Wallingford, KY 41093

For Christmas trees, text or call (859) 474-0287.