The Sussex Christmas Barn – Festive Farming at it’s Finest!

In a world where we’re saturated with festive commercialism it’s a joy to come across a business priding themselves on sourcing goods locally, employing local workers and selling (as much as possible) sustainable products. Welcome to the magical place that is the Sussex Christmas Barn! Open for just 6 weeks of the year in the run up to Christmas, The Sussex Christmas Barn sells Christmas Trees and decorations as well as running a café serving hot drinks and cakes. I caught up with Estate Manager Ruth Wallis who explains how the Christmas Barn came about,

As a dairy farm in East Sussex, we found we needed to look at other ways of maintaining our income without relying on grants and subsidies once Brexit was announced. We decided to grow Christmas Trees! Eventually, we want to sell trees to local garden centres so that people can buy trees that are grown locally. We have sourced some of our baby trees from Oakover Nursery in Kent so that we are able to grow truly British Trees. So far we have planted over 65 acres of Christmas Trees. This year we are excited to be harvesting some of our own trees but in two or three years the aim is that we will be totally self-sufficient.

As part of our diversification we opened up a Christmas Shop bringing an old barn back to life in the process. The shop is open from the beginning of November until Christmas Eve. The shop is packed full of ornaments, tree hangings and decorations and looks very festive! The shop stocks local and national products. We are proud to support a number of very local business including Ouse Valley Foods (Barcombe), Crumble and Core (Newick), Fern Cottage Floristry (Blackboys), Tm Ford Garden Services (Uckfield), Rob’s Logs (Newick), The English Soap Company (Hassocks) and Tarragon Lion Fine Food (Barcombe).

The Sussex Christmas Barn is open daily until Christmas Eve selling Christmas Trees, decorations, gifts and produce. The Café is also open daily between 10am and 4pm. Please note that the café is located in an outdoor, covered area next to the barn. You may need to wrap up on colder days if you are planning on joining them for tea and cake. If you want a truly wholesome festive experience then this is the place to go, ho, ho!