Fourth generation family celebrates more than 200 years of running farm in Canfield
A Mahoning Valley farm is celebrating more than two centuries of bringing the community fresh locally-grown produce.
This year marks the 216-year-anniversary of the Hull family farming and sowing apples, peaches, pumpkins and more at White House Fruit Farm.
Customers visit the farm for for produce, including apples and apple cider, all year long.
Lauren Hull works at the farm. She is the fourth-generation of the same family that moved to Canfield and started the 200-acre farm over 200 years ago.
“We are so proud of this place, and we hope the community is proud of us as well,” she said. “To have this in our family for this long is just a testament to our hard work and how great our community is and all the support. We hope we have another 200 years to come.”
Hull said she’s proud to continue the local legacy set by her family back in 1815.
“It’s an honor to be here and working around the same way as my family,” she said. “To me, it’s really empowering to know where your food comes from.”
Hull said her dad, brother and fiance all make the apple cider.
“We make cider all year round with our own apples. It’s a labor of love, but it’s delicious, so it’s definitely worth it,” she said. “Not a lot of people realize that we have cider all year round. It’s not just a fall product; as long as we have the apple, we’re making cider.”
In addition to the apples, one of the highlights of visiting White House Fruit Farm is the bakery’s iconic blueberry donuts.
When White House Fruit Farm started making donuts in the 1970’s, there were only three flavors.
“It was plain, powdered and cinnamon sugar, and it was just that for a while. Then one day we tried blueberry - for the first several years, blueberry wasn’t even in anyone’s thoughts,” Hull said. “Then they started to pick up steam when the blueberry donuts went to the Super Bowl in 2012.”
New York Giants center Jim Cordle brought some of White House Fruit Farm’s blueberry iced donuts to the Super Bowl Championship, according to Farm and Dairy.
His Giants teammates couldn’t get enough of the sweet treats from Canfield.
“That’s when things really caught on, and people started to fall in love with them. Now it’s our big product,” Hull said.
The famous donuts are made fresh daily in the market, which also houses a deli, homegrown produce, canned salsa, jam, apple cider and locally-made honey.
“We try to really listen to our customers and see what they want,” Hull said. “It’s just a bonus to be able to work with another local company.”
“Being a local company ourselves, it’s really important to us to spread the love and show the love for the Mahoning Valley, so to have other great local companies in our market and be able to spread the word and give back to the community and to charity is really important to us,” said Hull.
The market is the family’s original barn built in 1881. The White House market is open all year round at 9249 State Route 62 in Canfield.
What to expect at White House in 2025
This year, Hull said visitors can expect some of the same and some new events at White House Fruit Farm.
In April, they’re starting a new event called the Tulip Festival, anticipating over 225,000 bulbs in bloom.
“The Tulip Festival will be brand new for us this year,” Hull said. “We’re super, super excited. We’re really hoping to make a big impact in the community, and everybody come out and enjoy the beauty we’ll have.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2025 at 5:13 AM.
