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A six-year-old behind me gasps so hard she fogs the entire window.

"MOM. MOM. LOOK! THERE'S A MILLION CHRISTMAS TREES."

Ten thousand, technically, but I don't correct her.

Because from here, she may as well be right.

The firs stretch across the hills in dark green rows, while smoke curls from the farmhouse chimney and the tired old roadside hut now glows like it was always meant to.

The Stratton family has transformed this place in two days.

They've smothered it with fresh decorations, flashing white lights, and a proper welcome counter at the hut entrance stacked with jars of Susan's cider mix. As we drive closer, I see she's also wrapped tiny packages of shortbread, stacking them neatly beside framed photographs of four generations of Strattons standing in these exact fields.

We pull up and the guests start piling out of the van, stopping at the photos.

There are dozens of pictures of Greg's grandfather with an axe, Greg as a boy on a tractor, three teenage brothers grinning around a bonfire.

"Welcome to Stratton Family Christmas Trees!" Hunter booms at the shuttle door, wearing a red flannel and the terrifying enthusiasm of a man who discovered this morning that premium delivery upgrades carry a forty percent profit margin. "Established in 1947, though I personally am much younger. Wagon Rides commence in ten minutes! Cider is mandatory! The bonfire is that way and yes, the marshmallows are free, please stop asking, ma'am!"

Within minutes of arriving, the beauty of the farm swallows the guests just the way I'd imagined. Will drives the wagon through the snowy tree fields with a running commentary that is roughly eleven percent accurate.

"—and this hill is where my great-great-grandfather fought off a bear using only a candy cane—"

"THAT NEVER HAPPENED," Greg bellows from the loading area.

The children believe every word, awed by the magic of Christmas all around them. One little boy asks Will if the bear is still out there and Will says, solemnly, "I actually heard he works security now," and the kid nods like this is the most reasonable thing he's ever heard.

Susan stands beside the bonfire with a copper pot of cider that smells like cinnamon, cloves, and the best Christmas anyone's ever had. She hasn't stopped filling mugs, and guests are gathered around, cradling their cups with both hands.

I can't help but smile.

Everyone here has got that care free look of people who've stopped checking their phones for the first time in months.

Trust me, of all people, I know how freeing that feels.

I swallow down and don't think about the fact I haven't switched my phone on for days now, looking across as Greg stands beneath the lanterns telling the farm's history to a semicircle of adults who paid resort prices to be here and would clearly pay double.

And across the yard, families are already roaming the rows of trees, choosing which tree gets to create memories with them this year.

I sigh and watch as a dad gestures between two fir trees while his kids argue passionately about branch symmetry. In the next row, a couple is kissing under falling snow, then giggling as the man tries to snap a selfie beside the tree they picked for their first Christmas together.

Hunter appears with a saw and an over-the-top dramatic flourish like tree-cutting is a sacred ceremony, which, here, I guess it is.

For the next hour, I run the whole thing from the ground up, redirecting the family who missed the wagon toward the bonfire, solving a delivery-slot double-up, and radioing the resort to confirm the second shuttle is on its way.

My boots are muddy, my hair has gone full snow-weather chaos, but all throughout the chaos, Miles’s words keep circling my head like one terrible line from a Christmas song I can’t switch off.

The arrangement ends where we said it would.

I shove the thought down and hand a hot cider to a shivering grandmother instead, watching some guests snap photos of the worn equipment that is still scattered everywhere.

The dead tractor. The stripped baler. The ladders under the shelter.

It's all evidence of what Miles was trying to tell me. That Ottawa money, that offer, that life-changing contract can change everything around here.

But something's already changed.

Because today… those rusted old pieces of history attracting all the attention don't look like failure. They look like a real working farm has lived here for generations, and that is the exact authenticity the Mistletoe Resort spent millions trying to manufacture.