Christmas Tree Business a Local Family Tradition

Working at the Robert Headley Christmas Tree Farm during Christmas time has been a family tradition for the Headleys for nearly a half of a century.

The Oak Ridge tree farm is selling three types of trees for families to take home this holiday season.

All priced at $35, the farm is offering blue spruce, white spruce, and douglar fir trees.

Terry Pessagno, whose grandfather Robert Headley starting planting the trees on the Weldon Road property since the 1950s, said she and brother and sister, Bob and Jerry, now own the business where some of their earliest childhood memories are.

Pessagno still remembers some of her earliest memories since she was five years old working at the farm.

"Every year on Christmas day my grandfather would have an envelope in the Christmas tree at his house and that would be our pay for working with the Christmas trees," she said.

Now with grown children of her own, Pessagno said that she and her siblings take turns working at the farm from Black Friday until the weekend before Christmas.

"My brother's family take a weekend to sell them, and then my family takes another, and my sister's family takes another," she said. "Now its fun because the kids have taken over."

She the next generation, including her nieces and nephews, have started to help out as well.

Pessagno said when her grandfather passed away, he left his entire Weldon Road property to his family. Pessagno and her two siblings live next door to each other on the street in the same property as the Christmas tree shop.

With the busiest week of the season coming up this season, Pessagno said she's already seen a lot of sales. She said some families make it a tradition to come to the farm to get their tree, who have been coming for years.

Robert Headley Christmas Tree Farm is located at 1056 Weldon Road in Oak Ridge, and is open Saturdays and Sundays until Christmas from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.