THE GALEHOUSE FARMS HAVE BEEN IN THE FAMILY SINCE 1815 (SIX GENERATIONS).

Galehouse Tree Farms started selling Christmas Trees, cut-your-own, in 1932. That makes us one of the older, perhaps the oldest choose and cut farms in Ohio. We also wholesale cut Christmas trees and balled & burlapped trees for landscaping

Harry Galehouse started selling Christmas trees from a 10 acre plot.

Since then the second, third and fourth generations are keeping the farms going.

We now have 180,000 evergreen trees in cultivation on 200 acres.

The farms are presently owned and operated by Shirley Galehouse and her daughter Amy. The field manager helps us with the 20 or more students from our local high school, who trim trees in the summer and do the wholesale and retail harvesting in the winter.

Most of our trees are sold from Thanksgiving to mid-December. That makes very busy weekends. We are fortunate to have a large extended family (sons, daughters, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, brothers and sisters-in-law…) to help us on those weekends.

In 1979 we started a small gift shop. It has grown larger each year. At one barn we set up The Tree House gift shop and retail trees, in another we make all of our wreaths, centerpieces, specialty roping, and other greens pieces. All of the designing and decorating is done by Shirley and Amy, both of whom have studied at the Hixson School of Floral Design in Lakewood.

Since this has always been a family business, we feel we know what our customers (young and old) are looking for. We try to make our farms welcoming and friendly, please come and visit.

OUR FARMS

Our earliest farms were planted with fruit trees and other agricultural crops in the early 1800’s.  The first Christmas trees were planted in the early 1920’s in Knox and Wayne Counties. The first tree harvest for Christmas was in 1932.

The upper farm where we sell trees today, was set up and planted in 1982. A conservation plan was developed for the farm to be planted in strips. We continuer to replant all of our farms in strips for conservation.

Approximately 800 trees are planted per acre. Not all go to harvest as a Christmas tree—bugs, diseases and the four legged creatures take their toll–where 70-90% are sold for trees, 10-15% can be used for wreaths and roping, the rest are recycled as mulch in our B & B operation.

Most of the fields have finished their 1st through the 3rd rotations and are being planted for the third at the forth time.