Turn onto Beaver Creek School Road in late November and you'll see the same gravel lot most Ashe County families have been pulling into for years. Rows of Fraser firs climbing the hillside. A trolley waiting to haul people up the mountain. What's changed is what happens after you've picked your tree. Fifteen years ago, you paid, you left. Now you can walk into a working winery built on the same family farm, order a glass of wine, and decide whether you really need a ten-footer this year.
That farm is Sexton Farms, and the tree-cutting side of the operation goes by Frosty's Choose & Cut. What most people don't realize is that when Frosty's closes for the season, usually sometime in mid-December, the winery next door doesn't. Old Barn Winery keeps its regular hours straight through the winter, long after the last Fraser fir has left the lot. Two businesses, one plot of land, two entirely different calendars. That split says more about how choose-and-cut season actually works in this county right now than any list of farm addresses could.
The Farm Behind the Wine
Sexton Farms has been rooted in the West Jefferson community since 1960, four generations deep. The choose-and-cut side started small, with three brothers running it as kids on the family land. Today the same farm grows Christmas trees, pumpkins, and grapes, and in 2022 the family opened Old Barn Winery on-site, a natural next step for a farm that had spent decades figuring out what else its land could do.
Matthew Sexton, one of the three brothers who founded the operation, put it plainly when a reporter from The Assembly visited last December: "We've been gradually expanding, adding new things for people who make the trip." The winery is the clearest example. As he told it, "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."
That's not a slogan. It's a description of how the farm actually functions now. A trip that used to take twenty minutes can now take an afternoon, and the Sextons built the infrastructure to make that true: hayrides or trolley rides up the mountain, a holiday shop stocked with wreaths and garland, hot drinks, and a winery pouring wine by the glass, bottle, or flight while you decide on a tree.
What Closes and What Doesn't
Here's the part that surprises longtime visitors. Frosty's Choose & Cut runs on a tree farm's calendar. It opens for a few weeks around Thanksgiving and shuts down once the trees are gone, the way every choose-and-cut operation in the county does. Old Barn Winery runs on a winery's calendar instead. Right now it's open seven days a week, with hours stretching into early evening on Fridays and Saturdays, and none of that depends on whether there's a single tree left standing in the field.
So if you show up in January looking for the atmosphere you remember from a December visit, the trolley won't be running and the trees will be gone, but the barn will still be pouring. That's worth knowing before you plan a return trip around the wrong season.
Hickory Creek Farm, a newer choose-and-cut operation in the Fleetwood community near West Jefferson, runs on a tighter version of the old model. Opening day for the 2026 season is November 21. The farm sells pre-cut Fraser firs harvested straight from its own fields, provides the hand saw if you want to cut your own, and crafts its wreaths and garland on site. There's no winery attached, but there is a lineup of scheduled Santa visits this year: November 28 from noon to 2, December 4 from 6:30 to 8 in the evening, December 5 from noon to 2, December 11 from 6:30 to 8, and December 12 from noon to 2. All free, all open to the public.
Put the two farms side by side and you get two different answers to the same question, which is what a choose-and-cut trip is actually for.
| Sexton Farms / Frosty's | Hickory Creek Farm | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Beaver Creek School Road, West Jefferson | Fleetwood community, near West Jefferson |
| Season | Frosty's closes mid-season; Old Barn Winery stays open year-round | Opens November 21, 2026 for a shorter window |
| What's added | On-site winery, trolley rides, holiday shop | Handmade wreaths, greenhouse poinsettias, scheduled Santa visits |
| Best for | An afternoon built around the trip, not just the tree | A quick, focused visit with a specific Santa window |
Where the County Fits Together
Neither farm operates in isolation. Ashe County is the nation's top Christmas tree producing county, and by Matthew Sexton's own count there are at least fifteen choose-and-cut operations spread across it, each running its own version of the same basic idea. North Carolina as a whole trails only Oregon nationally, and roughly one in five real Christmas trees sold in the country traces back to this state. That scale is why a farm like Frosty's can afford to diversify into wine while a newer operation like Hickory Creek can still find room to open with a simpler, tighter offer.
The other half of a typical Ashe County tree trip happens after you've left the farm. Downtown, Ashe County Cheese has been operating out of its Main Street factory since 1930, when the Kraft Corporation folded several small community cheese plants into one operation. The three oversized steel cow sculptures standing outside didn't show up until 2011, when the factory's owners decided their plain milk storage tanks needed a second life. Artist Stephen Willingham designed the cow heads, and a welding class at Ashe County High School, led by teacher Rusty Rogers, built and installed them. They've been stopping traffic on Main Street ever since, and for a lot of families, a stop at the cheese store is as much a part of the day as the tree itself.
What This Means for Your Saturday
None of this is really about which farm has the better trees. Every choose-and-cut operation in this county is selling the same Fraser fir, grown a foot a year on the same kind of hillside. What's actually different is the shape of the day you're signing up for.
Head to Sexton Farms and you're committing to an outing. Trolley up the mountain, cut your tree, walk into a working winery on the same property, and decide whether a glass of red changes your opinion on tree size. That whole sequence only exists because a fourth-generation farm chose to add an entire second business rather than just selling more wreaths.
Head to Hickory Creek instead and you're signing up for something more direct. Show up on a scheduled Santa night, hand-saw your own tree from a field that's only open for a few weeks a year, and be home in time for dinner. Neither approach is more authentic than the other. They're just built for different Saturdays, and knowing that before you load the kids in the car saves you from showing up somewhere expecting a trolley that was never part of the plan.
That's the thing about a county this size. The tradition looks the same from the highway, rows of firs on every hillside, but the businesses running it have quietly built two different versions of the same season, and most people default to whichever one they remember from childhood without ever checking what it's become.
If you're weighing a move to Ashe County or West Jefferson and want a read on what a specific neighborhood or property actually offers beyond the listing photos, that's the kind of local detail Chris Barr tracks year-round. Reach out any time to schedule a free consultation and home valuation.
