Pete's Tree Farm gets ready for the holiday season

Chuck Costanza takes a brief respite from his chores. He said: "I'm outdoors all the time and feel better than I did 20 years ago!" He provided a historical insight: "Seedlings used to cost two cents a piece; now, they are $1.05!"

Jeff Costanza, Chuck's son, feeds a tree into a HOWEY Christmas Tree Baler. This protects the tree and compacts them, creating more space for transporting them to the retail outlet. Before being cut, the trees need to experience a couple of freezing days; that sets the needles. They generally are cut on a warm day to keep the sap in the tree.

Pete's Tree Farm gets ready for the holiday season

Peter Costanza started up Pete's Christmas Trees out of a barber shop on Genesee Street in Rochester in 1931. The business was moved to Paul Road in Chili in 1942 where trees were grown on site and sold there. In 1967, Pete added a 42 acre farm on Hindsburg Road in Murray, referred to in the family as "the Holley farm." According to Chuck Constanza, who now runs the business, "The whole family is involved in the Christmas tree business. We still use the Paul Road location for retail sales and even sell "Charlie Brown" trees there. These are small and/or misshapen trees and many people are thankful to buy a tree like that because the price is low. Real trees are still selling well. Artificial trees are sucking money out of the country because they are made in a foreign country. We recycle everything; after Christmas the cut trees are made into mulch. We replant about 5,000 trees every year." Trees sell for $30 or less at the farm.