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New York Farm Bureau News Bytes
#8: Interview with Pete Goderie at Goderie's Tree Farm - 12/17/2025
00:14:07
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- [00:13]
A
Welcome to News Bites. Today we are talking to Pete Goddard at Goddardy's Tree Farm in Johnstown, New York. Welcome, Pete.
- [00:21]
B
Thank you.
- [00:22]
A
Tell us about, first of all, how the business got started, maybe a little history of the farm. I know you've been in business here for 55 years.
- [00:29]
B
Yes, the farm's been family almost 100 years. About 1930, my great grandfather moved down when they flooded the Sacondaga Reservoir. So he had a farm up there and it was a small dairy farm up until about 1960. And on the passing of his wife, he sold half the farm off. They sat vacant for about 10 years. And my parents decided to start growing Christmas trees in 1970 to put my brother and I through college. Ironically, it never really made any money until we were out of college. And so anyway, since then we, we, Mike and I took it over in the mid-80s and in about 2000 we wound up buying the other half of the farm back, which was sold when my grandfather passed. So anyways, we got about 250 acres here now and we've been doing it since 1970, expanded into nursery stock as well as Christmas trees. So great.
- [01:30]
A
That's a great testament to being business for so long and growing the business. So what about tradition? Talk about family tradition. I'm sure you probably see the same people, the same families coming.
- [01:39]
B
Oh, yes, it's great with this business. You see the families come in and over the years you've seen the children come back in and the grandchildren come back in and it's pretty, it's pretty interesting. In the cut your own, it's usually the younger families that come in and want to do the cut your own. I think a lot of the people when they get to be our age are just happy to get a tree. You know, pick a tree off the lot and you don't own it.
- [02:01]
A
Right?
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B
Yeah.
- [02:02]
A
And speaking of trees, what varieties of trees do you grow right now?
- [02:07]
B
Fraser fir, balsam fir. We've got a few new hybrids, Korean balsam cross, which has been a new one. And we're always experimenting with other ones. There's a handful, some Lazio cross, concolor fir, which are a beautiful tree, but they're very slow growing, so we're looking at that angle too. What we can grow quickly and turn over versus certain trees that may not be native to the area and struggle. They're popular trees, but it's all economics at the end. What you can turn over the quickest on some of these blocks.
- [02:39]
A
Right. And are some trees known for certain things like not Shedding or making certain things.
- [02:43]
B
Oh yeah, by far. Fraser fir are the ones that will retain their needles the best of all the trees. They're also probably one of the more site selective trees to grow because they, they don't like wet feet. They want to be dry, well drained. They're native to North Carolina and the high ground, North Carolina elevation. So they like the cold weather, they're very good with that. And they have a very late bud break which is good for this climate because we get a lot of the cold snaps around, you know, right before Memorial Day. If you get a hard freeze then that will freeze the new growth of some of the trees off. And that's some of the problems with the hybrids as they break about too early.
- [03:20]
A
So now what about tree maintenance? I know there's a lot involved in maintaining a tree farm. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah, well that starts usually early April. We're both planting trees and fertilizing. That's usually our fertilizing. So everything is fertilized. There is some spraying involved certain times of the year for mainly our biggest concern is spider mites and aphids in the trees. Relatively selective, non toxic that we're spraying. That's changed over the 50 years. I mean what they've changed with the chemicals we use. And then of course there's the shearing. The shearing starts around 4th of July once that new growth has started to harden off the trees. And with the volume we've got, we try to be done by late September, early October. And you really should shear everything once the season. That forces the tree to create more buds for the following year and it gives it that uniform shape. So we're always working the leaders and the shearing. And then there's also mowing the primo. All these sections four times a season, plus some herbicides trying to keep the weeds and the competition down between the trees. So there's a lot involved.
- [04:32]
A
It sounds like it. And you were talking about cut your own versus pre cut. I know you, you offer both here. Is it sort of an equal situation or.
- [04:40]
B
That depends on the season. It depends. Like right now with a lot of snow, we've seen the cut your own drop off quite a bit. If it's a nice year, which we've had one year we had to shut it down because we had so many people in there as we're worried about not having anything left. That was by 10 years ago. But for the most part it's about a 50, 50 blend. You know, and I say most of it's weather related and cold related at this point. This.
- [05:02]
A
Yeah, like today it's pretty cold out there.
- [05:04]
B
Yes.
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A
And what about tagging your tree in advance? How does that work?
- [05:09]
B
We have a lot of people that come in and pre tag the tree and they, they give us the date they want it cut. So we usually cut it and have it wrapped for them when they come in. And then there's another group of people that want to tag their tree and then come in with the family and cut it. So we have both of those going on. I have two separate areas. There's one area we don't allow cut your own in, so that's easier to monitor and maintain. And it's also where we take a lot of our wholesale trees out of those areas. So just, just from. We have about a 50 acre plate lot here where we do the cut your own.
- [05:41]
A
So does that mean you can tag your tree anytime you want? Is this mostly in the summer they.
- [05:45]
B
Start right around Labor Day and usually for the most part the areas are going to tag and we try to have those sheared by that time. So yeah.
- [05:53]
A
And what about other Christmas products? What else do you sell here?
- [05:57]
B
Oh, we sell wreaths, kissing balls, garland bundles of boughs. We also wholesale both of those too. We wholesale wreaths and trees. And of course we gotta probably get into the nursery end of the business too. So we dig a lot of trees also.
- [06:15]
A
And you make the wreaths here?
- [06:17]
B
Oh, all of them made right here. Yeah, yeah. We've got about, I think it's about 12 mostly gals that come in here. Some are stay at home moms that work during the day, some are extra Christmas morning, so they come in the evenings and stuff. So. But it's a good group. I've had the same group for probably 25 years that come in.
- [06:35]
A
Wow, that's great.
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B
It's almost like family.
- [06:36]
A
Yeah. And you just touched on landscaping and tell us about the other things you do at other times of the year in terms of your nursery business, your landscaping business. I know you have a berry picking.
- [06:47]
B
Oh, yeah. We have about an acre of blueberries. Pick your own blueberries. We have two high tunnel greenhouses which we grow tomatoes in which we, a number of local restaurants we supply and a couple of the orchards around, we supply the tomatoes for them. So.
- [07:02]
A
And landscaping, is that another part of your business?
- [07:04]
B
Oh, the landscaping is probably after Christmas, the biggest part of the business. We mainly tree installations, design work, that type of stuff. And we have usually two Crews of guys that are out doing the installations. So my son Jared kind of spearheads that end of it.
- [07:19]
A
Great. So it's really a family. A family business for sure.
- [07:22]
B
Three different tree spades, so we can dig a variety of trees, different sizes.
- [07:27]
A
Great. You mentioned earlier when you and I were talking about an environmental stewardship program that you have here. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [07:35]
B
Well, yeah, we. We work with the USDA and nrcs. The stewardship program is woodlot management, because on the farm Also there's probably 100 acres of wood lots we've got here. So they were in a grant program where we maintain about five acres a year. And we also put in a pollinator habitat in the backfield, which is about a half an acre when we killed all the native vegetation off. And then we put wildflowers. So. And that's a pretty good program. We. It goes for about five years, and then they may renew it. We have to, you know, reseed it to say.
- [08:16]
A
So you're planting wildflowers for pollinators? Yes, yes.
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B
And then the other key is you can't mow it. So we can't mow it until after the first hard to freeze. So we leave it for the summer.
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A
And what about an irrigation project I understand you're starting.
- [08:28]
B
Yeah, we've been about four years in the making with Fulton county soil and water. It's going to be about an acre pond that we're going to put in, and it's going to be able to irrigate about 40, 45 acres of this front field. And it's under the Climate Resilient program. What we're finding is that the rainfall per year is the same, but when we get. It is not the same. You're getting either a lot at once or none of it. And we tend to lose a lot of transplants in the spring. If it's prolonged dry periods. Once they're established, they're fine. If you get two or three years in, the trees are fine. They can sustain it. But the transplants are very vulnerable. Especially like last year, we had so much rain early on, the trees put out so much growth, I think once it dried off, the roots couldn't sustain the volume of growth they had on the. On the top. So this is pretty good. They're supposed to start that in the spring, and I'm pretty excited about that.
- [09:21]
A
And that will help you maintain control over there? Yes.
- [09:23]
B
Yeah. And it may not be. Have to be used every year, but you get the right year, you'll be set up to do it, and it'll. We'll be able to irrigate the. The new plantings for a couple of years.
- [09:30]
A
Right. So we talked about which trees are kind of best for which purposes. But what's the best way to care for your Christmas tree once you get it home? Maybe you can give us some do's and don'ts here.
- [09:40]
B
The. The best thing is a fresh cut in the bottom when you get it and lots of fresh water. Warm water, they say, will help with the SAP. As far as preservatives, I've heard a lot of things. There was a study done by the Christmas Tree association, and they found that the best thing to do is a fresh cut with lots of water. But I know there's a lot of tales out there about aspirin and sugar and salt, But I still think the best thing is a fresh cut, plenty of water, and don't let it run dry.
- [10:11]
A
Right.
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B
They say once the stand runs dry, that SAP will seal up in three or four hours. Wow.
- [10:17]
A
So you can go all natural here. Just water. You don't need any.
- [10:19]
B
A little trick we. One time somebody had run dry and I suggested taking a cordless drill and drilling below the water line because the water's taken up under that cambium layer, the bark, so the wood of the tree doesn't take the water up, but it's right below there. And they called back afterwards and said, yeah, all of a sudden the tree started water up again. So if your tree stand runs out of water, that'd be a little trick to try.
- [10:43]
A
I didn't know about that one. That's a good one. And what about once the season is over, what's the best way to dispose of your tree? I guess there's several ways to dispose of your tree.
- [10:54]
B
A lot of people will have a mulch or they'll run through a chipper and use them as mulch. We've had a lot of people come in. There's some local goat farms that they want to feed the trees to, as long as they have had color on them or certain. I think we talked about tinsel or stuff like that. That'd be pretty clean for the goats to eat. And a couple of local established routes have Christmas tree burning parties, which is a festive. A couple of breweries and stuff will do that.
- [11:21]
A
But that's great idea. I've not heard of a Christmas tree burning party. I think we need to start that tradition.
- [11:27]
B
I think they sell some beer with it too, so.
- [11:29]
A
Of course they do. And of course, you sell the bags that you can take the tree down with. I know you have a lot of accessories here as well for the tree.
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B
Tree stands, all that. Yeah.
- [11:39]
A
And now onto Farm Bureau for a moment. You're one of our biggest proponents of Our Safety Group 486, which is our group coverage for workers compensation. Maybe you can tell us how that happened.
- [11:49]
B
And we were at a trade show probably 10 years ago and we had a booth with other business set up there, the BTF wholesale, which is supplies other tree farms of the ribbon netting and all that. But right next to us is a Farm Bureau booth. And I see this safety program and that's been one of our biggest expenses over the years was workers comp. And it was one of the best moves we ever made. It cut our workers comp in half.
- [12:15]
A
Wow.
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B
I'll give a plug to Michelle Bates. She's been great. Anytime I've had any questions and I really push it. Any of the farmers that I talk to, if they have a payroll and they have to carry workers comp, definitely look into it. It's a big savings. And there's also a rebate every season if there's been no claims. Very happy with it. Yeah.
- [12:34]
A
The Dimmatan has been very successful for us. Yes. That's great.
- [12:37]
B
And I'm on the Ag and Farmland Protection Board. So all the meetings, I always give a little blurp about it. Any of the farms that are looking for it. So.
- [12:46]
A
Great. Well, maybe you can tell us when you're open, what days of the week and your hours. It's certainly not too late to get a Christmas tree.
- [12:53]
B
Yeah. This time of year we're open seven days a week and it's eight till seven. Except on Sundays we closed. Closed at six. Our only downtime around here is usually January, February, March. But we do a lot of maintenance around here too. We're always cleaning up the farms, areas that we want to replant for the spring. So we're trying to get those ready to go.
- [13:13]
A
So it's fair to say this is a365 business here. You're not. Yes. It's not just Christmas trees. Thank you so much for joining us and Merry Christmas to you and your family.
- [13:23]
B
Thanks for having me. Thank you.
- [13:26]
C
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