It is expected to be a bumper year for Christmas tree growers this festive season, with families putting up their decorations earlier than usual and buying more than one tree in some cases.
Last year the Christmas tree market was worth €22 million to the farming economy, with 450,000 trees sold on the island of Ireland and a further 200,000 exported, and hopes are high that the 2020 sales will be higher still.
Growers are pointing out the benefits of "real" trees, such as acting as carbon sinks while they are growing, and their sustainability as they are replaced by new plants when cut.
Although there are almost three weeks left until Christmas Day, tree farms countrywide have been busy since last month.
"It was a week earlier, people were coming with children and saying 'we're putting up this tree'. Cabin fever, we have to do something to keep them happy," Isaac Wheelock of Wheelock's Christmas Tree Farm in Wexford, and the Irish Christmas Tree Growers' Association, said.
"The mindset of people is just fantastic. When children get out into these fields, I suppose they've been locked up and they can't get out [in lockdown]. People are very relaxed, they're in good humour," he added.
Many people return year after year to get their trees on the same farm, he said. "It's grand to go out into the fields and pick your tree and see it growing."
He said that "hopefully" this year will be as good if not better than other years.
"People have money this year, they didn't go on holidays, they didn't go to the pub, they couldn't go to the restaurant. People are buying two trees where before they bought one. They're putting one in the garden.
Mary Wheelock of Wheelock's farm outside Enniscorthy said that introducing the tree to water, or even other liquids, when it gets to its new home will help it outlast the yuletide season.
"When you bring home your tree, if you put it standing in a bucket of water it will take a lot of water in the first two or three days and then it will seal itself and it won't take as much water," she said.
She added: "I decorate mine from the top and if you have little children around you have to try and keep the decorations off the bottom as best you can.
"I like the decorations myself because it's like a nostalgia thing for me. I have decorations going back over 50 years."
When 6 January comes around, trees can be disposed of in environmentally-friendly ways at council depots and other specialist facilities nationwide.
