GUILDERLAND — The holiday season is fast approaching, and Earl MacIntosh has been preparing for its arrival.

Trekking through rows of Fraser firs, blue spruces, and Norwegian spruces, he makes sure his fields are clear of debris. The Saturday after Thanksgiving is when his business, Weathered Willow Tree Farm, will open, and customers will be welcome to roam the fields to pick a Christmas tree.

“It’s the first thing you’re going to see when you jump off the wagon. The kids are going to go crazy and go for that hill,” he said, pointing to a section of his property and adding that he takes care to clear the path so no one stumbles over something.

Customers, explains MacIntosh, are brought up in a tractor-pulled cart to the rows of evergreens, where they can pick a tagged tree at a price somewhere between 40 and 55 dollars. They can have a tree cut for them or can use a saw themselves. MacIntosh says he often finds families “negotiating” who will get to use the saw.

For MacIntosh, Christmas bears a very personal and religious significance, and a Christmas tree, in particular a live tree, carries that significance.

“A tree is a symbol, a Christmas tree is a symbol,” he says, explaining that a cut-tree is still alive in that it takes in water and nutrients, and therefore represents the holiday as a living thing. “It’s a very important symbol,” he said.

MacIntosh started the business on his family farm as a means of relieving stress. Working at Albany Medical Center, he says he sought relief from his high-pressure job by taking a blade to the trees and trimming their branches to an appropriate shape and length.

The trees at Weathered Willow Farm are usually shipped in at three years old and transplanted into the fields. This year, MacIntosh says they are trying to use trees shipped in at five years old, which stand about a foot high.

“The time and effort is much greater for the small ones on a per-hour, per-year basis,” says MacIntosh. “And, once they get started, it’s a lot easier.”

Some of the trees will grow too tall for most people to fit in their homes, but MacIntosh says there’s still a chance that someone will want that tree.

“Everybody has a different idea of what makes something perfect,” said MacIntosh. “Whether it’s a woman, or a man; or in my case, trees.”

MacIntosh describes the tree he prefers as trimmed neatly into a cone shape — not “open” as he would call it — and with full base.

“But it’s not what I think is perfect, it’s the customer — what you think is perfect,” he said.

MacIntosh recalls a time when two young, well-dressed women in their thirties made their way across the entire field — mud sticking to their high-heels — to pick out a tree all the way in the back.

“That’s the tree they wanted and that’s the tree they got,” said MacIntosh.