Farm's branching out was a good gift for Cork's Christmas market

Farmer Pat Lehane is looking forward to welcoming Cork families to his Christmas tree farm, with the lord mayor visiting this week to select trees for charity groups.

Lord Mayor of Cork, councillor Fergal Dennehy, attended the Christmas tree farm yesterday, when he chose trees to give to charity groups across Cork.

The farm supplies trees to numerous charities in Cork, as well as schools.

Mr Lehane, the owner of the Christmas tree farm, said Mr Dennehy was the sixth lord mayor who had made the annual visit to the farm.

“It’s become part of the Cork Christmas tradition now, like turning on the lights,” he said.

The farm is located at the top of Donnybrook Hill, overlooking Cork city.

He said it is one of the few Christmas tree farms in Cork city, and that all trees are grown on site.

“It’s a real farm, so children sometimes come in sticking up their noses at the smell of the cattle,” he said.

“I ask can they smell the Christmas trees and they say they can smell the cattle!

“It’s a different situation to going into a shopping centre or garden centre to get a tree.

“We get a lot of grandparents with their children and grandchildren taking a photograph — it’s a great day out.

“A lot of people are more interested in the experience than buying stuff — you can walk through where the trees are growing on a real farmyard and on a good day there’s a lovely view over the city; it’s an experience most children remember.”

He added that live trees have been “given a bad name” in recent years, but that this is often due to trees brought from elsewhere in the country being packaged for transport and kept too long in pallets to save storage space. “People who buy our trees come back the following year and always comment that they lasted so long,” he said.