An unusual three-in-one setup near Milbank -- cut-your-own field, staff-cut trees, or a daily precut stand in town -- but the field itself keeps limited weekend hours and no pricing is published.
Cash only. This farm doesn't take cards, based on what we found — bring cash or confirm ahead if that's changed.
Rocky Gardens, three miles northeast of Milbank off Highway 12, is one of the more unusual setups among South Dakota tree farms in this list, mostly because it isn’t primarily a tree farm at all. It’s a diversified fruit operation run by owner Loren Koopman – apples, blueberries, grapes, raspberries, and strawberries across other seasons – that added a wide Christmas tree selection on top of an existing farm business.
This is the standout feature: Rocky Gardens offers cut-your-own, choose-and-cut (staff cuts a tree you’ve picked), and precut trees, all under one business, but not all in the same place or on the same hours. The field itself – where you’d walk out and cut your own, or point at a tree for staff to cut – keeps weekend-afternoon-only hours, roughly 1pm to 4pm, starting the weekend after Thanksgiving. Separately, the farm runs a self-service produce stand in town at 311 S 4th St, Milbank, open daily during daylight hours all season, which sells precut trees. If your schedule doesn’t line up with a weekend afternoon, the town stand is a real workaround – just know it’s precut only, not a field experience.
The tree variety list is wide: Austrian pine, Balsam fir, Black Hills spruce, Blue spruce, Canaan fir, Colorado blue spruce, Red pine, Scotch pine, White pine, and White fir (Concolor) – ten species, which puts it among the more varied selections in the region.
The record notes cash or check as the accepted payment at the field, so don’t plan on a card working there. One address caveat matters for actually finding the place: the field’s address is listed simply as “Koopman Drive,” which couldn’t be independently confirmed on a map, so the coordinates attached to this listing are a general Milbank city-centre estimate rather than the exact field location. If you’re driving out specifically to the field (as opposed to the in-town stand, which has a normal street address), calling ahead for directions is the safer move than trusting a mapped pin.
No pricing shows up anywhere in the sources checked, for either the field trees or the town-stand precut trees, so there’s no dollar figure to offer here – that’s a real gap for anyone trying to budget ahead of a visit, and the honest move is to ask directly rather than guess. The record also doesn’t say whether saws are provided at the field, so if you’re planning to cut your own tree, it’s worth confirming whether you need to bring one. Parking and accessibility aren’t addressed either.
The three-option flexibility here is genuinely uncommon, and the daily in-town precut stand solves the usual weekend-only tree-farm problem for people with inflexible schedules – but with no published pricing and an unconfirmed field address, this is a call-ahead farm rather than a show-up-and-go one.
The field is estimated to open the weekend of November 21, 2026, based on a description of 'weekend after Thanksgiving until Christmas or sold out' rather than a farm-published date, and stays open only on weekend afternoons after that.
Not stated in the record.
Not stated directly, but the field's narrow weekend-afternoon-only hours (1pm-4pm) concentrate demand into a small window, which points to more pressure on those specific hours than a farm open longer days.
Not described in the record.
Not addressed in the source.
Skip the field itself if you can only visit on a weekday, since cut-your-own and choose-and-cut access is limited to weekend afternoons (1pm-4pm); the town stand is the workaround if a precut tree will do, and skip this farm generally if you need confirmed pricing before deciding, since none is published.
No specific nearby-farm comparison is available in this record.
Both, plus a third option: you can walk the field and cut your own, have staff cut a chosen tree for you, or buy a precut tree from the farm's separate town stand in Milbank, open daily.
Weekend afternoons only, 1pm-4pm, starting around the weekend after Thanksgiving. The town produce stand at 311 S 4th St keeps daily daylight hours separately.
Yes -- the record describes it as primarily a diversified fruit operation (apples, blueberries, grapes, raspberries, strawberries) that added a wide Christmas tree variety list, run by owner Loren Koopman.
No pricing was found in the sources checked for this farm. Ask directly at the field or the town stand.
Opens November 21, 2026 (closing date not published). Weekend afternoons (field); daily at town produce stand. Hours: Field: 1pm-4pm weekends; stand at 311 S 4th St, Milbank: daily, daylight hours (self-service).
Pricing was not published when we last checked.
No — this farm sells pre-cut trees it grew itself; you don't cut your own here.
Koopman Drive, Milbank, SD 57252, in Grant County. It is one of 7 farms we track in South Dakota.
We track 7 farms in South Dakota, 6 of which let you cut your own tree. The farm has not published a starting price, so it cannot be compared on cost — call before you budget.
There is 1 other farm we track in Grant County. All South Dakota farms →
Map pin is set to the town centre. Navigate to the street address above, not the pin.
pickyourownchristmastree.org · dakotaruralaction.org
Checked September 2026.