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Pine Tree Barn

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In some respects, The Pine Tree Barn on state Route 226/Shreve Road between Wooster and Shreve shouldn’t be the successful company it has become since its humble beginnings nearly 65 years ago.
When Bob and Betty Dush decided to start their own business — a Christmas tree farm — in 1952, people thought they were nuts, said Matt Kilbourne, who is owner of the business with his wife, Julie, the granddaughter of Betty and the late Bob Dush. It was at a time when people, if they wanted a live Christmas tree, would go into a wooded area and cut down a tree.
But, Yuletide Tree Farm, as the company was known, succeeded, so much so the couple took great pride in paying off the loan in full in a mere six years.
When Bob Dush wanted to buy another farm in the 1960s because business was so good, there were those skeptics who …show more content…

Well, Matt Kilbourne said the view is one of the most spectacular in Wayne County, and it is doing quite well.
Julie Kilbourne’s parents, Roger and Rita Dush, came home from Chicago in the 1970s as the family prepared to transition the farm operations to the second generation.
Matt Kilbourne said the family points to 1980 as the year when the Pine Tree Barn, as it is known today, was born. Roger and Rita Dush had the vision to move beyond being a Christmas tree farm with a small Christmas decorations shop and having some prepackaged foods and beverages for sale. The bank barn on the property, built in 1868, would be the retail business and restaurant, instead of a place to come in from the cold and get some hot chocolate, hot dogs or popcorn.
And, the trend should be apparent by now, people thought they were nuts and there was no way a year-round Christmas shop with a full-service, gourmet lunch restaurant would survive. Who would drive to the middle of nowhere for such a business establishment?
As it turns out, a lot of

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