Willey’s Christmas Trees was officially founded in the spring of 1970 when Ken Willey and his Uncle Red planted a mix of about 1,000 Balsam and Fraser fir seedlings on the Willey property. Fortunately, while the baby seedlings were growing, Ken was able to hone his shearing skills on some older trees that his brother planted for a school project back in 1958. He made time out of his schedule as a sheet metal worker to grow and tend to his Christmas trees. He learned as he went with tips from his neighbor who happened to be a charter member of the New Hampshire-Vermont Christmas Tree Association. By 1973, they had some of the original trees Christmas trees to sell out in front of their home in the Burlington, Vermont area.
In 1975, work took Mr. Willey and his family south to Mechanicsville, Virginia…750 miles away from the tree farm. The Willey’s established their first tree lot in Mechanicsville that December of 1975. To continue shearing and shaping the trees, the family took “vacations” north to work on the growing trees during the warmer seasons. And as the number of planted trees continued to grow, so did their small family operation.