Colors are changing in Volinia Township, not only on the foliage tunnel to Butler Tree Farm, but on the ground, from

pumpkin patch orange to Christmas red at the new Santa’s house with sleigh throne and carved sassafras reindeer with movable heads.
Though remote Crane Street northeast of Dowagiac can be plenty creepy with a boneyard on one side and a snowmobile graveyard on the other at neighboring Stauffer’s parts salvage yard, plucky pumpkin pursuers who persevere past oaks with bedsheet ghosts fluttering from them will be rewarded with a memorable family outing in Sam and Brenda’s theme park, where school groups enjoy field trips weekdays at the former cattle ranch.
A comparison to Cassopolis Kitty Litter tycoon Ed Lowe bringing Jones back elicits an unexpected response.
“I worked for Ed for 17 years,” Brenda said. “I managed the cattery and traveled with him when he did commercials, positioning cats. (Sam’s visionary) mind reminds me so much of Ed.”
Sam used to make a lot of furniture, mushrooms and three kinds of deer — buck, doe and one with its head down, grazing.
“We want to offer something special and memorable you can’t get anywhere else,” Brenda said, “so children growing up remember going to ‘this wonderful place somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Michigan’ on a family outing where they go do something together like in the innocent day we long to go back to without malls or high-tech.

Making connections
“We love doing trees, but if trees were all we were about, we wouldn’t be doing this. It’s bonding time. Giggling, smiling faces, running and squealing mean memories connected with this addition” serving children of their original customers.
“Chicago people (70 percent own area lake property) talk about coming through this tunnel of trees in the woods and all of a sudden it opens up and there’s like a city all lit up and decorated,” Sam said. “Everybody drives a couple of hours to get here, so families spend three to four hours. I never dreamt and still can’t grasp that thousands would pass through here in five short weeks.”
One noticeable trend is that pumpkin picking provides a fair-weather opportunity to reserve a tree rather than tromping around in deep snow later.
Four weekends of hay wagon rides through the pumpkin patch finished fall Oct. 23.
Photos of pumpkin-plucking outings have overflowed the walls and creep across the ceiling like vines. Visitors can sip cider or hot chocolate and admire hand-made hats around a Round Oak stove and an old copper washer made in Syracuse, N.Y.; its agitator looks like street lights.
Next to them is a 1934 stove Frank and Beulah Roth of Elkhart, Ind., bought for $7. Their son, Charles, is Brenda’s uncle.
“We have a lot of Illinois people,” Brenda, the Volinia Township clerk, said Wednesday.
“Granger, South Bend, St. Joseph, Stevensville, Kalamazoo, all over” who find them through their Web site. “(The gift shop) was all orange and fall colors. We don’t do ghosts, goblins and creepy, scary Halloween things. We’re born-again Christians. We just focus on autumn, harvest, Indian corn, gourds, pumpkins and old-fashioned outdoor family days, which the families who come to us really appreciate.”
Established in 1998 as a retirement pursuit when Sam left the railroad, Butler Tree Farm opened to the public in 2000 and has grown beyond anything they imagined, with campground cabins, a petting zoo, bake shop, crafts and eight kinds of Christmas trees,
While it’s hard to imagine anything so unique being replicated, Butler’s second son and his wife, Sam and Kelly, are opening Butler Trading Post with antiques, collectibles, lawn furniture, cement statues, crafts and ornaments on U.S.-131 in Constantine, next to Dollar General, on the Friday following Thanksgiving.

If you go

What: Butler Tree Farm
Christmas opening: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. beginning Nov. 25
Christmas hours: 1 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekends
Pick a favorite: Brenda Butler says her favorite of eight varieties is the concolor fir with its citrus smell. The trees have a feathery look with soft, but strong, needles.

Tribute on the farm

Don’t miss Brenda Butler’s Vietnam trailer at Butler Tree Farm.

Clutching a box of Kleenex, she worked with Creative Vinyl in Dowagiac to create the tribute with which her Marine husband, Sam, hauls his four-wheeler to Kokomo, Ind., for a Vietnam reunion.
Brenda was 15 when she met Sam on his 17th birthday, July 9, 1967.
He went to Vietnam at 18 and, though they were not yet married, she saved every letter he wrote home.
She arranged photos and other memorabilia to chronicle his evolution from an uncertain-looking teen when his boots touched down in Vietnam to the rugged man who, when he finally went to The Wall on his motorcycle two Memorial Days ago, spectators solemnly parted to let him pass.
“The war made him who he is,” she said.
The centerpiece is eight Echo Company 2nd Battalion 9th Marines — “Hell in a Helmet” it says on their patch — comrades killed in a firefight April 23, 1969, on Dong Ha Mountain.
Sam carried Brenda’s senior picture, his map, money, the mangled lighter which helped shield him from further injury when he took gunshot wounds to his stomach and chest — leading to his Purple Hearts — the telegram informing his parents of his injury and a photo of him meeting Connie Dang, a Vietnamese woman grateful for their 1968-1969 service in Quang Tri.
Brenda cries easily when talking of the war: She lost friends from battle wounds and more from complications of Agent Orange.
Many stories Sam has not shared with his wife, like why he insisted their first son be named Stephen, but they socialize with a comrade, Joe, from Tecumseh.
“To be in their presence is sacred ground,” Brenda said. “It brings me to tears every time.”