How is a Christmas tree farm valued?

Start with how the ground is classified. In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, harvested cropland includes land where hay was cut and land used for Christmas trees, orchards, vineyards, berries, nurseries and greenhouses, and Christmas tree land is reported as harvested cropland, not woodland.

On paper, then, a field of planted trees sits with the hayfield and the orchard, not with the woodland whose worth is worked out in how timber is valued. The trees are a crop grown toward a harvest, not standing timber valued as stumpage.

Neither the statute's use definitions nor the VDACS standards name Christmas trees, and no state text places them in one category. The local assessing officer decides whether land meets the classification standards, and may request an opinion from the Director of Conservation and Recreation, the State Forester or the Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

• Forest use is land, including standing timber, devoted to tree growth meeting the State Forester's standards.
• Horticultural use is bona fide production for sale of fruits, nuts, berries, vegetables, and nursery and floral products, and the VDACS standards list nursery, greenhouse, cut flowers, plant materials, orchards, vineyards and small fruit products as horticultural production.
• Trees on farm ground: land producing trees or timber products qualifies as agricultural or horticultural use only if it is less than 20 acres, meets the State Forester's technical standards, and produces tree or timber products incidental to other farm operations.
• Prior use: if the state standards require a minimum period of prior use, a local ordinance may waive it for agricultural and horticultural crops that take more than two years from initial planting to commercially feasible harvest.

None of those lines settles a given field. The Commissioner of the Revenue makes that call, and whether a tree field keeps its land use taxation and use value assessment after a sale is a question for that office, not an assumption drawn from another county's practice. How the program works in general is covered at Virginia's land use program.

With no published price per tree or per acre and no settled tax class, a Christmas tree operation is read the way any farm is, part by part and then as one place, which is the subject of how is a farm priced.

A crop still standing in the field raises its own question at settlement, covered at what happens to a hay crop at closing. Whether two-road frontage on a tree farm changes the picture is answered at does frontage on two roads change farm value.