MOGADORE, Ohio — Nestled in a valley off of Waterloo Road in Suffield Township, Adolph Tree Farm has quietly sustained its family’s farming legacy in Portage County, Ohio. Aside from the old wooden sign advertising the types of trees sold there, there isn’t much indication of the oasis that lies about 500 yards below, at the bottom of a hill that gently slopes downward and ends at a small creek.
“We’re fortunate for a lot of reasons. One, it’s in a valley, so people in a way don’t know we’re here. Which you might think, ‘That’s bad because you’re a business,’ but it’s not bad because it makes it nice and quiet,” Tom Adolph said.
The imprint of Tom’s family history is evident in every corner of the 17-acre property. It’s all been carefully preserved, cataloged and displayed on the farm by his family, especially by his youngest son Joe Adolph. And the love and care that’s gone into recording Adolph Tree Farm’s evolution recently earned it Ohio Century Farm status.
Ohio Century Farm
It’s easy to see the land as it is now and think that’s always the way it was. It’s even easier to forget those who came before. But not only does looking back make it easier to appreciate what’s been left behind, it reminds us who we are. At least, that’s been the case for Joe.
Joe’s excellent adventure detailing the history of the Adolph family and the origins of Adolph Tree Farm began at the end of 2017. Eight months before a family reunion that took place on what’s left of the family farm, Joe compiled a 178-page document containing his family’s complete lineage back to the first Adolphs to immigrate from Germany in the early 19th century, historical documents, newspaper clippings, biographical information and personal reflections from living family members. Then, last year, Joe and his wife, Krista, tirelessly researched the farm’s property exchanges, stretching back to the original 1914 deed, which ultimately culminated in the designation of Adolph Tree Farm as an Ohio Century Farm on Sept. 4, 2024.
Farm history
After bouncing around neighboring Randolph Township, Tom’s grandparents, George and Ida Adolph, bought 89 acres in Suffield Township for $9,600 on March 20, 1914, and started a dairy farm, which the area was known for at the time. The property stretched across Waterloo Road, with nearly 60 acres that included the original farmhouse and crop fields on the north side of the road and the dairy barn and pastures on the south side. The farm was eventually split up even more when U.S. Route 224 was constructed sometime in the late 1950s to early 1960s, separating the northern 38 acres of crop fields from the rest of the farm.
George and Ida raised six children on the farm: Tom’s father, Eugene; Gilbert; Arnold; Herman; Kenneth, and Leona. While most of their children left the farm to get into banking or work in the rubber factories in nearby Akron, Arnold and Leona remained to run the farm from 1953 until their deaths. Leona died in 1977. Arnold would be the last full-time farmer in the Adolph family, running the dairy into the late 1970s and farming until he died in 1989.
“I don’t know how he ever did it, when you think about it. But he did everything,” Joe said.
After Arnold’s death, the land was split up and sold, mostly going to neighbors. However, a 17-acre section of the original farm south of Waterloo Road, including the dairy barn, an old schoolhouse and a pasture, became Adolph Tree Farm.
Adolph Tree Farm
Tom and his uncle, Ken, bought the land to keep it in their family, and to do that, they had to keep farming. But they wanted something they could farm easily that wouldn’t require either of them to live on the property.
Ken came up with the idea to turn it into a Christmas tree farm, and it worked out perfectly because the seasonal schedule was manageable for Tom, who taught at the University of Akron for 26 years. They planted their first trees up on the western hill in 1988, while they were managing that part of the farm under a land contract, and sold them out of the back of the dairy barn at the top of the hill.
Over the years, the landscape of the farm changed. The dairy barn started to deteriorate, so Tom found a company in Wadsworth that bought barn wood and sold what he could. The old schoolhouse, which was once used to house hogs on the lower level and as a garage and repair shop above, had to be torn down because the foundation kept shifting.
However, remnants of both remain on the farm today. The wooden sign out by the road straddles what remains of the schoolhouse foundation. The cornerstone of the barn, stamped “1852 P. Lepper,” adorns the fire pit.
Tom and Ken planted Christmas trees on the hill and maintained their partnership until a few years before Ken passed away in 2003, leaving Adolph Tree Farm to Tom.
“He gave the land to me and said, ‘You know, you go ahead with the farm,’” Tom said. “I did, and all of my family got involved.”
As Tom’s sons, Joe and Andrew Adolph, became more involved, they stopped planting on the hill, expanded their nursery, installed an irrigation system and built a shed and a barn toward the back of the property.
“This was all pasture land. None of what you see was here. This was nothing. And then Tom and Joey and Andy built everything here,” said Tom’s wife, Carole.
Today, the original planting site features a 2-acre pollinator field with native Ohio wildflowers and a windbreak to keep the seeds from spreading. The eastern hill produces about 4 acres of hay.
Around the same time, the Adolphs started planting decorative hardwoods and retooled their irrigation strategy. In the early days of the tree farm, Tom watered the trees by filling barrels at the end of each row with water from the creek to flood trenches he dug around them. That process evolved into loading the drums into the bed of his pickup truck, filling them halfway and using a 10-foot hose to water from the truck. Tom would drive, and Joe would guide the hose. They finally installed irrigation lines around 2008, acquiring them from a nursery that closed. Now, all of the irrigation is done with a small Honda pump, enough gas to run for 40 minutes and the repurposed irrigation lines that feed up to eight sprinklers, split into two rows, uphill, about 300 yards from the creek.
“It’s not sophisticated,” Tom said.
Tom, Andrew and Joe built the 16-by-12-foot shed and the 57-by-18-foot barn in 2010. However, there is still no electric or running water at the property, aside from the creek-fed irrigation system.
Adolph Tree Farm remains a small operation, selling Christmas trees, shade trees and flowering trees. Some of the varieties for sale include magnolias, weeping cherries, birch, dogwoods, dawn redwoods, blue spruce and shapely white pines — a testament to the care the Adolphs take in pruning them. In recent years, they’ve added a number of firs, including Concolor Fir, Fraser Fir, Balsam Fir and Canaan Fir. The Adolphs have shifted to fir trees over spruces because customers like the short, soft needles.
This spring, they started a new nursery behind the barn, which Joe’s young children, Alison and Adam, helped plant, but they don’t plan to expand much more. They sell about a third of the planted trees on the property each year, and they don’t like bringing trees in to sell. They like seeing the same customers year after year, getting to know them and their families.
“The people who come here, we’ve seen their grandkids, and now, they come back. That’s the nice thing about it,” Tom said.
Most of those who visit Adolph Tree Farm are repeat customers, but every once in a while, they’ll get customers from further away like Richfield, Hudson or Boardman.
Passing the farm down
Growing up, Tom spent a lot of time on his grandparents’ dairy farm. He can remember driving the hay wagon to the barn and unloading it before baling was common practice. He recalls the threshing machine visiting the farm at harvest time and the great meals his grandmother served everyone who came to help. He built quite a collection of arrowheads, which he still has, picking them up while walking behind his uncle Arnold’s plow that tilled the fields on the north side of Waterloo Road.
These memories and the ones he made on the farm with his family are the reasons he chose to preserve what he could of it.
“Although farm life was always demanding and hard work, the memories are priceless. And those memories and the few years I was able to share some of the actual farm life with my sons and wife are why I decided to continue working the farm, even though it has been on a much different scale,” Tom wrote in Adolph Tree Farm’s application to be recognized as an Ohio Century Farm.
Tom gifted the farm to his sons, Michael Adolph, of Washington, D.C., and Andrew and Joe, of Mogadore, Ohio, on Jan. 23, 2024, because at 85 years old, it was getting to be a lot of work for him. He still helps out, but Joe and Krista handle most of the day-to-day operations.
“I’m so thankful Joe — and his family, his wife — loves to do it, and they pitched right in. Even their son and daughter come out and help now,” Tom said. “Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do what’s being done here.”
Joe works as an IT professional with Old Republic Title Company as his first job, but he takes care of the farm in his free time — on nights, weekends, before work, on his lunch break and after work.
“It’s just a nice place to come and relax and have fun. You know, get some work in and just enjoy the land and the peace and quiet and the nature,” Joe said.
Juggling full-time jobs and the farm is one of the reasons the Adolphs limit their hours to appointments, weekends during the Christmas season and a spring sale that they advertise on Facebook. More than being in the business of selling trees, they’re interested in preserving family history, maintaining a place where they can all spend time together and ensuring the next generation of Adolphs has a chance to do the same.
“It’s, it’s been enjoyable. It’s been a family affair for years,” Tom said.
Since hosting their family reunion in 2018, which saw 40 to 50 relatives come from all over the country and even as far as England to spend a few days at the farm, the Adolphs have hosted campouts, cookouts, Labor Day clambakes and recently a field trip. Alison’s third-grade class visited Adolph Tree Farm last week, marking the farm’s first field trip. Andrew’s children, Lauren and Nate, have also spent a considerable amount of time at the family farm over the years.
“I feel pretty happy that it’s gonna be at least two or three more generations,” Tom said. “I feel very confident about that.”
I sure enjoyed reading the history of the Adolph farm. I heard about it from my husband Bob Campbell, but I never went there when I lived in Ohio, I wish I would have been able to visit. My husband was a cousin to Tom‘s wife, Carol and the farm sounds wonderful and I’m so happy your family is able to carry on.