WEST POINT — One of the more unusual outdoor Christmas trees on display in the local area this year is located on the State Line Road just south of West Point Dam. It’s about 15 feet tall and made of six large hay bales; three on the bottom, two in the middle and one on top.

It’s the idea of Springwood ninth grade student Brady Spradlin. His mom and dad, Lisa and Joe Spradlin, helped him get it together

“We did it with a tractor,” Brady explained. “The hard part was painting it dark green. That took a long time and a lot of cans of spray paint. It was a lot of fun for all of us. The scariest part was putting the star on top of the tree. Our tractor has a boom on it, and my dad raised me up so I could put it on. That was the worst part – I don’t like heights.”

An uncle, Tom Spradlin, gave them the hay bales.

“He grows a lot of hay throughout the year,” Brady said.

The ‘tree’ needed a plethora of clips to keep the lights on the bales of hay. There’s a good many ornaments on the tree and some gifts in the form of small square bales underneath. It wasn’t necessary to paint them. The natural brown color contrasts nicely against the dark green bales.

Ornaments on the tree include Santa riding in his sleigh and some large candy canes.

The Christmas tree is Brady’s second creative project. In the 2017 Thanksgiving season he made a large chicken to celebrate his favorite hobby. He loves to raise chickens, and he’s good at it, too. The Spradlins have around 50 chickens in a fenced-in area near their home. They also have some dogs and some rabbits.

Brady plans to leave the big tree up until January and is already thinking about a new yard scene for the Christmas season in 2019.

“I’d like to have a big Santa Claus next year,” he said. “We could do it by placing three bales on top of each other.”

Instead of using one color, dark green, to paint the bales, they’ll need red and black to paint Santa’s suit and white for the beard. Brady’s got plenty of time to figure out the details, however.