About TreeDates

TreeDates lists cut-your-own and choose-your-own Christmas tree farms that have this season's signs up. Every farm here was opened and read on its own website or social pages — not copied off last year's roundup.

What each sign means

Farms post their season on their own schedule, and plenty of them post nothing until November. So the sign tells you how much the farm has actually said about 2026:

An opening day — the farm has posted something specific for this season, and that's the date you're reading.
Usual opening — the farm's own site states its habit ("we open the Friday after Thanksgiving") but hasn't posted this season's dates yet. Treat it as likely, and confirm before you drive.
Call ahead — the farm is there and its site is live, but nothing about this season is up. We say so instead of passing off last year's hours as this year's.

Which farms get a page of their own

Every farm on a state board was read on its own site, and any farm with an official website of its own gets a page here too — the big destination farms with a few paragraphs written for them, the rest with exactly what the board holds and a link on to the farm. A farm we could only find in an association directory stays on the board without a page: there is nothing of the farm's own to send you to.

Sold out means sold out

From the week of Thanksgiving through December 20 we go back through the big farms every week. Cut-your-own rows sell through in early December most years and almost nobody keeps track — that's the sign a family driving an hour actually needs, so it's the one we keep current.

The lots in town

Not every tree comes off a farm. The tree lot pages list the pre-cut lots that set up in the same place every year — Scout troops, Optimist Clubs, parish parking lots — read off each operator's own page. Lots announce their dates in November, so until then those pages say where each one sets up and the window it ran last season, with its year, and never dress that up as this season's promise. A lot we can't find on an operator's page or a city permit listing isn't there.

And the January half

The same promise runs a month later, on the tree pickup pages: who collects the tree in your city, and when. Cities post the coming January's dates in December, a few weeks before the trucks run — so for most of the year the honest answer is the one those pages give. Here is the window this city ran last January, said with the year it belongs to, and here is the city's own page, which is where the next dates will appear. We never print a date for a January that hasn't been announced, and every city on those pages was read off a government page, with the date we read it.

The question that comes before that one — when should you take down the Christmas tree? — is answered the same way: the traditional dates quoted from a reference that keeps them, the fire figures quoted from the fire agencies that publish them, and the freshness tests quoted from the extension service that wrote them, each with the day we read it. Where nobody publishes a figure, that page says so instead of inventing one.

The one page here that isn't about buying a tree

Is this a mast year? asks the same question of the oaks: not what we think the acorn crop is doing, but what the people who count it found. 9 state wildlife agencies walk fixed routes every autumn and publish the result, and that page is what each one's last published count said, in its own words, with the autumn it belongs to attached. Where an agency publishes a grid and no summary, the row says so and sends you to the grid rather than inventing a sentence — the same rule as a farm we can't confirm.

Where the lists start

The state Christmas tree growers associations keep the directories that seed each state here. Those are a starting point, never the listing itself: every farm gets read on its own site before it goes up, and each row carries the date we checked it.

Seasons move fast, and a farm can post its dates the morning after we look. The checked date on every row tells you how fresh ours is.