Many of the families who cut their own Christmas trees this year at Homestead Farm and M&M Tree Farm near Granville carry years of memories about their annual outings.
This year’s special moments picking just the right tree will have to last a lifetime.
Both of the family farms – a little over a mile apart on Loudon Street, northwest of Granville – closed for good on the weekend of Dec. 14-15.
“It was a hard decision for us to make,” said Joe White, 75, whose family owns and operates Homestead Farm. “This is 35 years that we’ve been selling trees. So we’ve got some families that have been coming almost every single year, since we started selling trees. They bring their kids and grandkids now.”
His eyes glistened and he pushed his hands deeper into the comfort of his blue-denim-jean pockets when asked about how he was feeling.
“We’re not here to just sell Christmas trees, but to help families make memories,” he said. “There have been lots of memories for them and us.”
Up the road at M&M Tree Farm, the Gutridge family was in the same business of making memories. “My wife is the financial part, and I’m the production part. I’m Mike and she’s Mary, which is how we got M&M Tree Farm.”
Mike Gutridge said he planted the first trees on their seven-acre plot in 1990 as a hobby while working in the aerospace industry.
“This was my 34-year experiment,” he said. “I sold the first trees in 1996 – eight Scotch pines for $14 apiece.It was a big start.”
After a few years, he sold about 200 trees a year – 300 in a big year, like 2001 and this year. And that number, he said, is about what a large operation, such as Timbuk Farms & Garden Center, another Granville-area tree farm, would sell in a couple of hours.
At 73, Gutridge said, “I’ve aged out of the program. I do it all myself, and I’m down to the last two grandkids helping with selling.”
The real work in the Christmas-tree business begins in the spring, when seedlings are planted, and there’s even more work during the summer. That’s when tree growers prune each tree by hand, mow between the rows, and combat insects and disease that can damage trees.
Because pine trees take six or seven years to grow to Christmas-tree size, and fir trees take up to a decade, Gutridge said he stopped planting six years ago.
Down the road, White and his sisters, Julia Priest and Jean Schultz, stopped planting trees about the same time.
It was never about making a profit, White said. It was about families and memories.
Katherine Weisinger, 56, had been a consistent customer at Homestead. She moved to Granville when she was 17 and had been going to the farm with her family ever since.
“We went every year and would take a ride on the little wagon with my parents, and wander around until we found our favorite family tree,” she said. “I think it was the best memory you can have when you’re with your family. It’s about being together.”
Weisinger lost both of her parents to illnesses less than a year ago. The two passed away five weeks apart this past spring.
“This is my first Christmas without my parents,” she said. “With them not being here, I called the farm and told them about our tradition. I told (White) I wanted a tree from the farm because it’s where my memories are.”
White picked out a tree for Weisinger and her two brothers to enjoy at Christmas. White even brought the tree to what had been their parents home, where the family will be celebrating, and secured it into a stand.
“It was incredibly special that he took the time to do this,” Weisinger said between tears. “I can still have that memory with my parents this year even though they aren’t here. This is a huge deal.”
“My mom made every tiny thing special,” she said. “Having these memories of running around the farm. Meeting whoever was working there. We would stand around the fire and warm up and just be together.”
At the farm, the extended White family was on hand each year to help customers. After customers cut their trees and hauled them in sleds back to the barn, White family members would shake out the brown needles and bale the trees to make it easier to load them into trucks or strap them to car roofs.
White’s daughter Tamara Warden, 35, traveled by plane from her home in Maine with her two daughters, Braylee, 10, and Lainey, 8, to soak up the last few days of Christmas-tree season at the farm.
The girls were eager to help customers, as did Warden, who also saw a lot of old friends who came for a tree and to share memories of their many years of trips to the farm. And White was happy to have them all there.
“My daughter and two granddaughters went out to the farm and picked out this year’s tree” for the White homestead.
White said the next generation doesn’t have an interest in operating the Christmas tree business. Ideas of converting the barn into an event venue have been suggested.
“We’ve had a couple of good friends have weddings here,” White said. “One of them just had their grandson get married here. Another family that we go to church with had their son get married here.”
White and his wife, Therese Ann, live in the white, two-story house near the barn. It’s the original farm house that dates back to 1923, when White’s grandparents moved to Ohio from Iowa. The farm was passed to White’s parents, and then to him and his siblings in 1973.
White and his brothers, Jerry, James and John, decided to plant Christmas trees in 1980 and eventually started selling them in 1989.
When asked about his favorite memories at the farm, White took a deep breath and a long look around during one of the last days the farm was open.
“The people,” he said, adding that while there were no special plans for the final days, they would be special days “spending time with the families and remembering the times we’ve had.”
Lola Carter writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here. Alan Miller, of The Reporting Project, contributed to this story.