Pining for Something Real At Frosty’s Tree Farm

Photos by Jesse Barber.

It was 37 degrees and cloudy when I pulled into Frosty’s Choose & Cut on a December Saturday, waved into the crowded parking lot by an Ashe County sheriff’s deputy. A pair of plush elf legs were sticking out from the hood of his patrol vehicle, curled elf toes fluttering slightly in the wind. 

“He should have looked both ways!” the officer chuckled, directing me toward a muddy parking space.

Frosty’s needs traffic control because it is one of the largest Christmas tree farms within North Carolina’s top tree-producing county. The Old North State accounts for one in five Real Christmas Trees sold across America, according to the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association, which likes to emphasize the Realness through capitalization. 

And while fresh-cut North Carolina trees are readily available at your local Lowe’s or one of the hundreds of temporary lots that pop up in parking lots around the state every November, convenience is not the guiding virtue for the choose-and-cut devotees who flock to Frosty’s.

“It’s about the experience, making an event out of it,” said Andrew Smith as he loaded a Fraser fir into the back of his Chevy Silverado. “Get a little sap on your hands, get your friends’ minivan stuck on some ice—that’s the real deal!” 

Smith brought his family up from China Grove and invited friends all the way from Maryland, who made the long drive to Ashe County just for the experience of riding a tractor up a Blue Ridge mountainside, selecting the right tree from among thousands, and carting it home. 

“I like trees bigger than I can handle,” he said, eyeing the 12-footer poking over the tailgate as his wife and kids crowded into the backseat. “We’ve been doing this since I was a kid.”

A lot of choose-and-cut customers inherit the tradition, coming back to the same spot year after year for a dose of holiday nostalgia. Frosty’s gives them plenty of reasons to linger, with food trucks, a coffee bus, a gift shop with ornaments and decorations, and now a year-round winery. 

A jovial, mountain-accented Santa holds court just a few steps from the wine bar, listening patiently as children put in orders for Barbie real estate, Pokemon accessories, and “LaLuBus? LaMuMus? Some kind of doll.” (Santa was hazy on the LaBuBu trend, but promised to look into it.) 

“We’ve been gradually expanding, adding new things for people who make the trip,” said Matthew Sexton, 31, one of the three brothers who started the choose-and-cut operation on the family farm when they were still in grade school. 

“Now that we’ve got the winery, you can drink a glass of wine and then maybe decide to pick a 10-foot tree instead of a 7-foot tree.” 

Like nearly all of the Christmas trees that come from the North Carolina mountains, the ones at Frosty’s are Fraser firs, planted in neat rows across rolling hillsides and growing at a rate of about 1 foot per year. Oregon sells more trees, harvesting Douglas firs and Noble firs on an industrial scale, but North Carolina is in a strong second place, besting Michigan and Washington State. 

“The North Carolina Fraser fir has soft, pleasant-to-touch needles, incomparable needle retention, long lasting aroma, and more pliable yet stronger branches for even the heaviest ornaments,” the tree association boasts, noting that Fraser firs have been chosen for the official White House Christmas tree 16 times—“more than any other species.”

This year, a 10-footer from Frosty’s will set you back $175, while a 7-footer is a relative bargain at $85. Alternatively, Walmart will ship a “Carolina Pine” plastic tree right to your front door, LED lights and fake pinecones included, for a hundred bucks. You can throw in a pine-scented candle for $5.

“Look, a lot of things are easier,” Sexton said as two of his colleagues hoisted a Fraser fir onto the roof of a Volvo. “But some of the best memories are when things are inconvenient. People are still into it; they still want to come up here and be in the mountains and give their families a story.”

There are at least 15 choose-and-cut operations in Ashe County, by Sexton’s count, and he’s proud of helping drive the winter-season tourist economy. He’s seen families come from as far away as Florida to fetch a tree, hoping to catch a glimpse of snow and feel a little Christmas chill. 

Not all is merry and bright, of course. “Quit eating parking lot ice!” I heard a harried mother shout at her young son, right before he hurled the rest of his snowy snack at his brother. There were kids shrieking, kids covered in mud, kids bawling to stay longer and kids begging to go home, often simultaneously (we all contain multitudes). I saw at least one grown woman shed tears of frigid suffering as she waited in the wind for a cup of cider, and I watched three Carhart-clad dudes strain to push a pickup out of a soggy parking space.

But just about all of those people were repeat customers who expect to be back next year, because nobody pines for an efficient Christmas or bland holiday lore.

When it was my turn to climb onto a trailer full of hay bales and ride out into the trees, I ended up next to Nicholas and Kaytlin McCormick, who had driven an hour and forty-five minutes from Kernersville. They already own an artificial tree, but they got engaged at the winery in January and decided to start a tradition they can pass down to their (future) children.

“This is our first time, and we’ll keep coming back,” Kaytlin said. “We’ll bring our kids here one day.”

The appeal for Nicholas was straightforward. “It’s just fun!” he said, tucking his hands into a pair of grey overalls. “It’s fun to get out and do stuff. Not everything needs to come in a box from Amazon.”