FARMINGTON — There’s a little bit of extra green this year on some balsam firs at Gooley’s Conifers Unlimited Christmas Tree Farm.

Hidden deep within some branches is a small plastic pickle. For the keen-eyed ones who discover the ornament, Walter and Joanne Gooley have a special prize of chocolate and Christmas candy.

“It’s my daughter’s thing,” Walter said Monday. “An old German tradition going back a couple hundred years.”

While many attribute the tradition of hiding a pickle ornament on the tree to the Germans, a little online research suggests that the tradition may have started here in the states after Woolworth’s department stores purchased vegetable glass-ornaments from Germany in the late 1800s. Some date it back to the Civil War.

Apparently, parents hide the ornament Christmas Eve and the first child to find it the next morning receives an extra gift from Santa. The first adult to find it might expect some extra good luck in the coming year.

The Gooley’s daughter, Cate (Gooley) Sides, a graphic designer in Brentwood, N.H., and her daughters, Jocelyn, 10, and Samantha, 8, have hidden the small pickle ornaments in trees that are ready for customers to cut down.

“At first, they were hidden too good,” Walter said. “The instructions for hiding were relaxed a little.”

Over the past two weekends, about 20 pickles have been found. Once found, the pickles are rehidden, he said.

The event will continue over the next two weekends. 

Climbing the hill across from the Gooley’s farmhouse or going farther up the hill where most of the trees are can be a little boring for little kids, he said.

“This makes up for it,” he added.

The children are now more interested in looking for the pickle rather than the tree.

Two children in a family of three each found a pickle, leaving the third a bit upset. The parents advised their youngsters that they would have to share, he said.

This is the first year for the pickle search at the farm. The Gooleys started selling from the tree farm on Cowen Hill Road in 1979.

Between cut-your-own trees at the farm and precut trees at their site near Hannaford’s, the couple average more than 1,000 sales a year, he said.

“But it’s a once-a-year income,” Joanne said.

A total of 3,100 trees were planted in May on the 220-acre farm, Walter said. The weather went right into a 17-day drought and 15 percent of the new trees were lost, he added. He expects to plant another 2,500 trees in the spring.

Walter, 80, and Joanne have considered how much longer they will continue. 

With their son, Chris, in Corinth and daughter in New Hampshire, they are thinking about future seasons, he said. 

“It helps keep us young,” Joanne said.

Gooley, a former state forester and state senator, and Joanne, a former teacher, make the trip to the farm for a tree a memorable experience.

Within a heated yurt, hot mulled cider is offered and Joanne’s quilts are there for viewing. 

Although the Gooleys live on a farm of balsam firs, some 6 to 7 feet tall, Joanne admitted that their tree is usually a “Charlie Brown” tree, often brought in on Christmas Eve and decorated with only a few bulbs.

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