About Us

Nanticoke History

Chip Shafer and Pete Shafer, the owners of Nanticoke™, were born and raised in Endicott NY. The brothers are the quintessential products of New York State. Their father, among many other fathers in the Endicott area, worked for years at the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory and after several layoffs found his way into manufacturing for IBM. These two companies, EJ and IBM, shaped the history of many families in Endicott NY, and the southern tier.

After graduating from Siena College Chip Shafer headed out west to experience life in the West and spent a short time growing plants in Arizona. Chip’s path eventually led him back home, where he took a position at Nanticoke Gardens in 1999. He started in the mix house mixing soil and filling pots and eventually worked his way up to production manager. In 2011 the previous owner of Nanticoke Gardens retired and Chip and Pete teamed up to purchase the business and keep the tradition of the garden center alive in Endicott. Pete’s history working in management and distribution and his education in business coupled with Chip’s experience at the garden center led to a good match.

The garden center continued to grow year after year, and in 2017 the brothers were awarded a license to grow Industrial Hemp in cooperation with the Binghamton University research team. That license led to the brothers developing their propagation skills and providing clones to several New York State hemp farmers. In 2018 Nanticoke successfully propagated over 100,000 clones. In 2019, that number increased to over 1,000,000 clones and over 500,000 seed starts for farmers throughout NY State. In 2019 Nanticoke Hemp Inc was created and the brothers began processing hemp into CBD oil. This oil was used to create retail CBD products.

In May of 2022, Nanticoke™ was awarded an Adult Use Conditional Cultivation license and the team successfully grew a crop of greenhouse and outdoor Adult Use Cannabis. After harvesting this crop, the Nanticoke™ brand of products started to come to life. As their garden center has come to be known for variety and quality, so too is the cannabis segment of their business. In the search for the widest selection of high-quality cannabis, Nanticoke™ has been working hard to develop their portfolio of genetics which consists of a combination of photoperiod cannabis types from both seed and vegetative cuttings as well as a mix of auto flower genetics from some of the best breeders in the industry.

In December of 2022, Nanticoke™ was awarded an Adult Use Conditional Processing license and we look forward to creating extract concentrate products to be released to the market in early 2023.

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