Lessons from Local Leaders:

Lee Ann Schwope

From Teenage Dream to 33-Acre Reality: How Lee Ann Schwope Built a Hallmark Movie Experience — and a Consulting Empire — on Her Own Terms

Some people chase their childhood dreams. Others let life carry them elsewhere and never look back. Lee Ann Schwope did something rarer — she let decades of life, career pivots, a divorce, and a cross-country move happen, and then she circled right back to the dream she and her best friend scribbled out as teenagers: buying a farm together.

Today, Lee Ann is the co-owner of Moose Apple Christmas Tree Farm, a 33-acre Hallmark-worthy destination in Berryville, Virginia, nestled against the Blue Ridge Mountains. She’s also the founder of Lee Ann Schwope Consulting, a strategic planning firm that helps B2B companies find their footing — and their future. And if that weren’t enough, she’s a co-founder of Family First Fitness, a motivational platform dedicated to getting families healthier together. She is, in every sense, someone who refuses to choose just one lane — and her businesses are better for it.

A Dream That Took Thirty Years to Come True

The story of Moose Apple doesn’t begin with a business plan or a market analysis. It begins with two teenage girls talking about the kind of life they wanted to live someday — a life that involved open land, fresh air, and something they’d built with their own hands.

Fast forward a few decades, and life had taken Lee Ann from Ohio through a career in engineering, into strategic consulting, and eventually through a divorce that, despite its pain, became a turning point. She relocated to Virginia, close to that same best friend who’d shared her teenage vision.

“She came to me with this opportunity to say, remember when we were teenagers and we said we wanted to buy a farm together? And that was like, yeah, that’s a crazy idea right now. Like, let’s not do that. And she was like, there’s this Christmas tree farm that we could buy — and we ended up buying it together.”

It had been roughly twenty-five years since that original conversation. Both women were in their forties. But when the opportunity showed up — a working Christmas tree farm with a legacy stretching back two decades — they said yes.

Creating a Hallmark Movie — One Family at a Time

Lee Ann doesn’t just want people to buy a Christmas tree. She wants them to feel something the moment they pull onto the property. She describes the Moose Apple experience as a Hallmark movie come to life, and every operational decision she makes is designed to protect that feeling.

Take the reservation system, for example. Many Christmas tree farms operate on a first-come, first-served basis, which means long lines of cars, frustrated parents, and cranky kids before a single tree is even chosen. Lee Ann and her partners took a different approach. By spacing out arrivals through reservations, families enter a calm, unhurried environment. Christmas music is playing. Hot chocolate and donuts are waiting. The mountains serve as a backdrop that no set designer could improve upon.

“We work really hard on the staff that we hire to have the best team there, such that people can feel like they’re appreciated. We try to make every component of the entire environment just really positive for people.”

Visitors are handed a saw, given a sled, and set loose on 33 acres of trees spanning seven different varieties. Some families trek to the far back of the property to find the perfect white pine, dragging it all the way back uphill — and they love every minute of it. Others prefer to sit down with their kids, enjoy a donut, and grab a precut tree without breaking a sweat. Lee Ann loves that the experience is fully customizable.

Beyond the trees, the Moose Apple Christmas store has become a destination in its own right. Lee Ann and her team source unique, often US-made goods — handcrafted candles, one-of-a-kind ornaments, and playful creations like bowling pins transformed into Santas. They’re not competing with big-box retailers. They’re offering something those stores never could: personality, intention, and heart.

Behind the Scenes: Sustainability, Craft, and Vision

What most visitors never see is the extraordinary care that goes into growing the trees themselves. Tyler Meyer, one of Lee Ann’s business partners, manages the growing operation with meticulous attention — keeping trees healthy, shaping them in a way that looks natural rather than artificially perfect. Every tree sold is replaced the following year, ensuring the farm regenerates itself season after season.

Sustainability for Lee Ann isn’t just an environmental checkbox — it’s a philosophy that runs through everything. After families decorate their trees, the team spends time cleaning the grounds, ensuring the land stays pristine. Lee Ann sees the broader significance of maintaining 33 acres of green space just outside Washington, D.C., and she takes that responsibility seriously.

“I hope in the long run, once we’re too tired to keep running this business — as the previous owners got to — that we can find someone else that will take it over and keep it going. We still want to make it the best Christmas tree farm in Northern Virginia.”

The wreath-making side of the business has also grown significantly in the two years since Lee Ann and her partners took over, and they’re continuously refining their craft. The message is clear: nothing at Moose Apple is static. Everything is being improved, iterated, and loved into something better.

Two Full-Time Jobs, One Driving Purpose

Lee Ann is candid about the reality of running a Christmas tree farm: the property alone — 33 acres in Berryville — is expensive to maintain. The farm is profitable, but it doesn’t sustain itself entirely. That’s where her consulting business enters the picture, and the two enterprises exist in a deliberate, symbiotic balance.

From September through December, Lee Ann essentially works two full-time jobs. During the day, she’s at her computer or traveling with consulting clients. In the evenings, she’s in the Christmas store making bows, arranging ornaments, or dreaming up the next creative offering. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I actually love it. I sit in front of the computer all day long or I’m on travel with clients, and then I get to go into the Christmas tree store and make bows or make bowling pin Santas. My brain is a little bit all over the place — I hope in a good way.”

This isn’t burnout dressed up as hustle culture. Lee Ann genuinely thrives on the creative counterbalance the farm provides. Her engineering background fuels the analytical work of consulting; the farm unlocks a creative side she hadn’t explored so intentionally before. Together, they keep her sharp, fulfilled, and mentally healthy — a point she makes with real conviction.

The Strategic Blueprint: Helping Businesses See Clearly

On the consulting side of her world, Lee Ann works primarily with B2B companies that are struggling to find direction. Her signature offering is what she calls a Strategic Blueprint — a tool that distills a company’s entire three-to-five-year plan onto a single page.

That might sound reductive, but it’s the opposite. The discipline of compressing a sprawling strategy into one clear document forces leadership teams to confront what actually matters. It creates alignment, gives teams a shared language, and eliminates the confusion that comes when departments are pulling in different directions.

“I love when the kind of the light clicks on and you can see that they’re like, ‘Oh, I get this. I see why we’re doing this.’ It’s really confusing for organizations when the entire team doesn’t know where they’re going.”

Lee Ann also offers one-on-one coaching, with a particular focus on women in STEM — a community she knows intimately from her own engineering career. She’s made exceptions for others when the fit is right, but her heart is in helping women navigate the unique challenges of technical leadership with authenticity intact.

Authenticity Isn’t Optional — It’s the Strategy

If there’s a single word that defines Lee Ann Schwope’s approach to business, leadership, and life, it’s authenticity. She doesn’t use it as a buzzword. She means it as an operational principle.

Lee Ann is a published author on the subject. Her contribution to the book Perspectives explores authenticity in the workplace — a project sparked when someone confided that they felt unable to be themselves at work because of their lifestyle. That story stuck with Lee Ann, and it became the foundation of her leadership philosophy.

“If your employees are spending time trying to hide who they are or not feel like they can be their full, authentic self there — that means they’re not giving 100% to the job that you’re asking them to do, so you’re basically losing dollars. Allow people to bring their full self there and then everything else will work out.”

Her argument is both moral and economic. When people feel safe to be themselves, they stop wasting energy on self-censorship and start channeling it into the work. When leaders avoid crucial conversations, unresolved conflict festers. When decisions prioritize short-term finances over long-term team health, talented people leave. Lee Ann has seen it all — and she’s built her consulting practice around fixing it.

Building a Legacy That Extends Beyond Business

For all her drive and ambition, Lee Ann’s endgame isn’t accumulation. It’s contribution. She describes herself as a lifelong philanthropist, and her long-term financial vision is designed around the ability to give back — generously and systematically — to the causes she cares about most.

Those causes include Soroptimist International, Wean, Junior League, foster care systems, and food banks, among others. The Christmas tree store even features ornaments handcrafted by orphans in Africa — beautiful pieces that serve both the customer and a cause far bigger than any single transaction.

This is what the two jobs, the late nights, and the long to-do lists are really for. Not to build wealth for its own sake, but to build a platform from which Lee Ann can make a meaningful difference in the lives of people who need it.

“My goal that I get through working two jobs sometimes is that in the long run, when the time comes, there’s enough dollars in order to help all of those organizations to make it a little bit better.”

The Habits That Hold It All Together

When asked about the mindset that keeps her going, Lee Ann doesn’t point to a productivity app or a morning meditation ritual. She points to structure — specifically, to two bookend habits that frame her entire day.

The first thing she does every morning is make the bed. The last thing she does every night is floss and brush her teeth. Between those two acts of discipline, she says, is where all the real work happens. It’s a deceptively simple philosophy that speaks to something deeper: the power of small commitments, consistently honored, to create a container for extraordinary output.

She maintains long to-do lists, prioritizes ruthlessly, and accepts that her priorities won’t always align with what others expect. Running multiple businesses demands that kind of clarity — and the willingness to let some things wait while the most important work gets done.

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Lee Ann Schwope is not the kind of leader who builds one thing and calls it a career. She builds ecosystems — a consulting firm that funds a farm, a farm that feeds her creativity, a creative life that makes her a better strategist, and a body of work that will ultimately fund the causes she cares about most. She is an engineer, a consultant, a farmer, an author, a coach, and a philanthropist. And she’s just getting started.

To plan your visit to Moose Apple Christmas Tree Farm, or to learn more about Lee Ann’s strategic consulting and coaching services, visit mooseappletreefarm.com and leanneschwope.com.

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