Long before the stadium tours and record-breaking albums, Taylor Swift had a very different kind of workday. According to reports, the singer grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, where one of her childhood jobs was to pick praying mantis egg cases off the trees so they would not hatch inside customers’ homes. It is a quirky detail that offers a glimpse of the country life behind the global pop star.
8 Oct 2026 | 14:25
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A childhood on a Christmas tree farm
As per Refinery29, the Swift family lived in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, and owned a Christmas tree farm of about 11 acres. Billboard reports that her father, Scott Swift, tended the farm as a hobby alongside his work as a financial adviser. Swift has said it was a “weird place to grow up” and has credited the farm for her love of Christmas. In December 2019, around the release of her song “Christmas Tree Farm”, she posted on social media that she really did grow up on one.
The unusual job
In a 2014 interview with Esquire, Swift said everyone on the farm had a job, and hers was to pick the praying mantis pods off the trees and collect them so the bugs would not hatch in people’s houses. She added, as per Billboard, that she got the task only because she was too little to help lift the trees.During a 2009 appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, she explained that praying mantises lay eggs that form pods on Douglas fir trees, and that she spent whole day walking among the trees, picking the pods off and putting them in a small basket.
Why it matters for Christmas trees
The job was not as strange as it sounds. Mantis egg cases can hatch indoors if a tree is brought into a warm house, as the warmth can trick the eggs into thinking spring has arrived. Some tree farms try to remove them before selling their trees.
From the farm to Nashville
The family later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when Swift was almost 13, to pursue country music. The farm, though, never left her story. It has shaped her love of the holiday season and, as fans know, found its way into her music.