The first thing you need to know about the Ergle Family Christmas Tree Farm is, you have to be going there to get there. Nobody leaves the house for a gallon of milk, or a package of screws, or to drop off a donation at the neighborhood church and comes home with an Ergle tree.
(Tom Jackson/Photos)
No, unlike the neighborhood big-box retailer and those ubiquitous pop-up lots, experiencing Debbie and Tony Harris’ rolling 25 acres on U.S. 301 above the north bank of the Withlacoochee River — like yoga or a “Gilmore Girls” marathon — requires commitment.
Nonetheless, for 25 years — longer if you include the original Ergle farm, a converted citrus grove nearby founded by Debbie’s late father, Omar Ergle, the Pasco-Hernando Community College provost — seekers by the thousands have found their way to this out-of-the-way place in the country to retrieve their centerpiece symbol of the season.
Once there, visitors browse from a menu that includes choose-and-cut Florida-hardy species in the field, or familiar imports from Michigan and North Carolina — Scotch pines, Douglas firs, blue spruces, Fraser firs and more — turning the farm into nothing less than the region’s yuletide crossroads, where evergreens and old-fashioned seasonal merriment are dispensed in equal measure.
Breathe deeply, the sign says. They’re making oxygen.
“You have to give customers what they want,” says Tony Harris, silver hair under an ever-present ball cap, and in his experience, about 70 percent of them want trees from up north, even though they cost about 80 percent more (about $10 a foot versus $6 for farm-grown trees). “But, for an old Southern boy like me, going out in the woods to cut down a red cedar and haul it home — that’s Christmas.”
Similarly, for most of the spread’s customers, treating the experience not like just another hurried household errand, but instead like a time-honored ritual, seems to be what it’s all about.
“It’s a tradition,” says Wesley Chapel entrepreneur Ben Alexander, founder of Balloon Distractions. “Coming out here” — as he did with his wife, Rachel, and daughters Claire, 19, and Grace, 17, on a recent Thursday — “harkens back to a time when people did stuff with their families.”
For the Delaneys of Treasure Island — Pete and Paula and their 28-year-old daughter Amanda, plus leashed Pomeranians Nick and Gabby — tramping around with a bow saw in search of the perfect tree (while Pete preserves the day on a 12-year-old Sony video recorder), followed by a picnic lunch, defines the Christmas season.
For Susan Zygmont, 81, from Connecticut by way of New Port Richey, every bit of the experience, from the moment her son, Bob, picks her up until they’re back home, is an eagerly plotted adventure.
“On the drive out here, you see so many things you don’t ordinarily see,” Zygmont says, “and then on the way home, we always stop at a little diner in Brooksville. It’s tradition. It’s Christmas.”
Virginia Michael Tokyro, from just up the road in northern Ridge Manor, likes that Tony will cut the price on a potted tree — which she’ll use for Christmas, then plant outside — in exchange for fudge.
Then again, it’s not just any fudge. Family lore holds that a San Diego grandmother came into possession of one of the recipes used by Los Angeles-based See’s Candies, and they’ve been whipping it up, now, for four generations.
As it turns out, the farm isn’t just for picking out trees. Area professional photographers — among them Wesley Chapel High digital media specialist Cortney Pleus — are pitching the place as the ideal location for Christmas card portraits.
So, here came the Webers of Lutz — Kyle, a Wesley Chapel High School history teacher; Kelly, a Sand Lake Elementary assistant principal; and their daughters, Sophie, 5, and Aria, 3 — to pose in the slanting light piercing the farm’s Choctawhatchee sand pines.
“We’ve known Cortney a couple of years,” says Kyle Weber, “so when she tells us she’s found a great place for pictures, we believe her.”
Happily, for the Harrises, this time of year few things shout “Hallelujah!” more boldly than a ceiling-scraping evergreen erected in the family room.
“I knew it was going to be a good year,” Tony said on a recent hopping Friday night. It bears noting the man is the essential optimist, a Gibson Les Paul-strumming, Harley-riding, boat-driving, Jimmy Buffet-celebrating free spirit.
But, December brought upbeat news, even by Tony’s hopeful predisposition. Diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2014, Debbie’s recent follow-up biopsy revealed no traces of a recurrence. More important, she reports she feels terrific.
All that said, then, “How could it be anything but a good year?” Tony says. Still — and he rarely is one to reveal proprietary information — this one is feeling exceptional. “It could be a record,” he says.
Accordingly, he ordered a second delivery of more than 1,000 trees from his supplier in western North Carolina, whose mountaintop farm, though not threatened, is within sniffing distance of the recent, raging wildfires.
More than 1,000 newly cut trees? In the second week of December? From a guy whose crew’s work is occasionally interrupted based on the wind direction?
As Alexander, the Wesley Chapel balloon guy, says, “It’s the holiday for love, the holiday for joy.”
This year, especially, those who come to bathe in the full Ergle experience are rewarded with both.
Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .
Published December 14, 2016
