New Jersey top agriculture chief visits Wycoff's Christmas Tree Farm in Belvidere.
New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher kicked off the choose-and-cut Christmas tree season at Wyckoff's Christmas Tree Farm near Belvidere.
The grower, winner of the 2015 New Jersey Christmas Tree Growers Association's annual contest, is a 10-time grand champion.
Farmed by the same family since 1839 - the sixth, seventh and eighth generations now raise trees and grow grain there on the 172-acre spread - Wyckoff's Christmas Tree Farm won the annual growers association contest with a Fraser Fir from its 65 acres that are covered with six varieties of Christmas trees.
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Col. Mark Piterski of the New Jersey National Guard was on hand to accept the tree, one of 100 that the N.J. Christmas Tree Growers Association is donating to Guard members and their families at a Dec. 14 ceremony in Bordentown.
The Wyckoff family also is hosting a "Trees for Troops" trailer where area growers will bring Christmas trees that will go to other military families. Students from Belvidere High School's FFA chapter also were on hand to present funds they had raised to buy trees for military families.