Prior Pines

Our take

Prior Pines sits on the north edge of Lincoln at 98th Street, which makes it a genuinely different kind of visit than most farms in this batch: an in-town stop rather than a rural drive out past the edge of the metro area. For anyone who wants a tree without a long trip, that location alone is worth noting.

The farm sells Scotch Pine and Fraser Fir, and it’s a full-service operation — staff handle the cutting, shaking, baling, and wrapping rather than customers doing it themselves. That means no saw to bring and no physical labor beyond picking the tree you want. Handmade wreaths and greenery are also sold alongside the trees, giving you a reason to browse beyond just the tree itself.

Why the details here carry more uncertainty than usual

Prior Pines’ own site was checked directly during the off-season, in August 2026, and at that point it displayed a “closed for the season” notice along with off-season contact hours only — Monday-Friday 3:30-5pm, Saturday-Sunday 10am-5pm. That’s not unusual for a business that operates only in November and December, but it does mean the actual in-season hours for 2026 genuinely aren’t published yet anywhere checked. Don’t plan around the off-season hours listed above as if they’re what you’ll find during tree season; they’re contact hours for the rest of the year, not visiting hours in December.

A Yelp listing separately flagged the business as temporarily closed. Taken alone, that could read as alarming, but it’s consistent with normal seasonal closure for a farm that only runs two months a year — not necessarily a sign the business has shut down for good. Still, given that the record can’t distinguish between “seasonal closure” and “something has actually changed,” a phone call before a special trip is the responsible move here, more so than for farms whose current sites confirmed an active season.

What the season and price look like, with real caveats

A prior season’s opening was reported as “starting November 28,” which lines up with the day after Thanksgiving 2025. Applying that same relative rule to 2026 (Thanksgiving falls Nov 26) gives an estimated Nov 27, 2026 opening — a reasonable projection, but not something confirmed directly on the farm’s current site. Pricing similarly comes from aggregated sources rather than the farm’s own pricing page: a reported range of roughly $20 to $80 depending on tree size and species. That’s a real number worth having in mind for budgeting, but it’s explicitly not confirmed for 2026, and given how far off the low and high ends are from each other, it likely spans several different sizes and species rather than describing any one option specifically.

The honest bottom line

Prior Pines looks like a solid, convenient, in-town choice for Lincoln-area visitors, with full-service handling and wreaths on top of the tree itself. But because the farm’s own site was only reachable during its off-season closure, both the exact 2026 schedule and current pricing carry more uncertainty here than at farms whose current-season pages were directly confirmed. Call ahead as the season approaches rather than assuming last year’s pattern holds.