Grove to Living Room, Growing a Christmas Tradition

Does your holiday tradition include cutting your own Christmas tree? Or maybe you want to start this tradition? Where do you go to make it happen? Visit Willamette Valley’s Drouhard Heritage Farms, located just south of Canby. Open seasonally for U-cut Christmas trees from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, this family farm offers a small selection of pre-cut trees as well. All trees are presently Douglas firs: additional varieties will be available in future seasons.

Amy and Robert Drouhard purchased the Canby Christmas tree farm five years ago from a local couple, Dan and Beryl Fisher, who had owned the house and property since the beginning and were now looking to retire closer to town. Assuming a five-year lease for commercial Christmas tree farming, the Drouhards spent the first three years planting their own trees as more land became available following each season’s commercial tree harvesting. Pursuing their dream of opening a U-cut Christmas tree farm for the community, Amy remarks, “We’d barely unpacked when we started planting trees.” With the ending of the commercial lease this year, the last of those trees will be harvested, leaving Drouhard Heritage Farms to sell their own U-cut trees as well as some pre-cut trees that will be available at the self-serve stand near the road.

Opening late last season, 2022 was looked at as a trial run. This year, however, with the expanded U-cut selection and timely seasonal opening, the Drouhard Heritage Farms operation is in full swing. Continued growth and hosting more customers every year with an aim for them to “come back next year and the year after that,” says Amy, is what this local farming family hopes to offer the community. “For me, continuing the tradition of families coming out, choosing a tree and cutting it themselves – that whole experience is what we want to build out here,” Robert relates. “It’s a tradition we want to keep alive.”

Robert grew up on a hay farm in eastern Washington with a generational history of farming that extends to the Midwest. Amy, who’s from Hubbard, remembers coming out to the Canby area with her family every year after Thanksgiving for a U-cut Christmas tree. “It was a big tradition for us,” she recalls and points out that she also has farming in her blood tracing back through generations. Wanting to carry the U-cut Christmas tree tradition forward for the local community as well as all of Clackamas County, Robert and Amy purchased the property on which they could pursue their dream, naming it “Drouhard Heritage Farms” as a way to honor their families’ rich farming history. Now home to the couple and their three children, David (6), Genevieve (5) and Josephine (3), Amy and Robert take pride in their ability to be good stewards of the land. They value the trees they plant as a way to help sustain the farm and maintain the land.

Furthermore, Drouhard Heritage Farms is able to purchase the seedlings they need directly from a local Canby nursery that is willing to work with a small farm venue. Amy expressed great enthusiasm that their farm business is able to help support another local Canby business. In addition to Christmas tree farming, the Drouhards are continuing to convert a portion of their land to pasture for raising pasture pork, and are planning to add sheep and cows in the future. They will also be bringing some goats to pasture alongside pigs, and offer a small petting zoo area for the youngsters who come to visit. “Our goal is to do more of a regenerative farming process,” Amy explains. Eventually they plan to offer chicken, lamb and beef as well as pork.

Amy and Robert feel privileged to be a part of the agricultural history of the area and to make their way among Canby’s close-knit community. Even more, they share a sense of getting back to what Christmas should really be about – those moments of spending time together.