The Holiday Season is ON at The Rocks Estate

We’ve already seen the season’s first snow here at The Rocks, and we are ready to open for the season this Saturday, November 17^th!

We have a full slate of festively fun activities planned throughout the holidays, from horse-drawn wagon rides through the farm to roasting marshmallows at our fire pit, along with visits with our own Green Father Christmas and two holiday shops filled to the brim with holiday accessories and unique gifts.

And Christmas trees, of course! Cut-your-own customers are invited to meander through our fields of fir trees to find their perfect tree. We also have a retail lot at The Rocks, with fresh-cut Christmas trees from large to small.

The Rocks will be open daily, from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. right through Christmas Eve. Wagon rides are offered November 17^th, 23^rd-25^th, and December 1^st-2^nd, 8^th-9^th, and 15^th. Green Father Christmas visits The Rocks Saturdays from November 17^th through December 15^th and will have fir tree seedlings for children to bring home.

Our Gift Shop and The Rocks Marketplace are open daily during the holiday season, offering an array of handmade wreaths created right here at the farm, ornaments, a plethora of New England-crafted items, maple syrup, fudge, and much more.

To find out more about what’s happening at The Rocks this holiday season, take a look at our online calendar. 

And don’t forget our Christmas Memory vacation package, offered in collaboration with the region’s best inns and hotels. Stay at any one of the participating lodging establishments, and you’ll enjoy a horse-drawn wagon ride and all the other holiday fun at The Rocks AND receive a Christmas tree as part of the package. Please visit our website for more information and a list of participating inns and hotels.

In fact, if you “Like” The Rocks on Facebook, you may enter to win a 2013 two-day Christmas Memory Package, comprising a stay at the Indian Head Resort, a beautiful farm fresh tree, and a holiday wreath. Check our Facebook page for details.

If you can’t make it to The Rocks in person, we invite you to visit our super shopper-friendly online store, where you’ll find a wonderful variety of Christmas trees, wreaths, accessories and gifts – all with free shipping!

The Rocks Estate is a beautiful place to be during the holidays… we hope to see you at the farm soon!

Rocks Estate Traditions & Trees for Troops

At The Rocks Estate, we endeavor to share the joy of the holidays with our customers. So we’re always happy to see folks return to The Rocks year after year to select a farm fresh Christmas tree, enjoy a horse-drawn wagon ride, browse our shops, sip some cocoa, and roast a marshmallow or two. For many of you, visiting The Rocks has become a holiday tradition, and we’d love to hear your stories.

If you’d like to share how The Rocks fits into your holiday season, please email your story to info@therocks.org.

One of our holiday traditions at The Rocks is supporting the national Trees for Troops program. Founded in 2005, Trees for Troops provides free, farm-grown Christmas trees to military personnel and their families serving both in the United States and overseas. Last year, Trees for Troops delivered more than 19,000 trees, and since 2005, the program has provided more than 103,000 real Christmas trees to members of our armed forces.

Trees for Troops is a program of the National Christmas Tree Association’s Christmas SPIRIT Foundation. Trees are provided to the program through donations by Christmas tree farmers and their customers. FedEx provides free shipping for the program.

The Rocks has wholeheartedly supported the Trees for Troops effort for years. Rocks Estate manager Nigel Manley is chairman of the national program, and in that role visited the White House when Trees for Troops was named a national finalist in the Joining Forces Community Challenge, an initiative started by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden to recognize organizations that provide service and support to military families.

Trees for Troops has also become a community effort, with the 5^th grade class from Bethlehem Elementary School spending a morning each December loading some 400 donated trees from New Hampshire and Vermont onto a FedEx truck at the farm. The students tag each tree with notes of thanks to the service men and women who will receive them.

It is often said that Christmas is about giving. Participating in Trees for Troops is our way at The Rocks of sharing a bit of the holiday spirit with the folks who serve our country. If you’d like to support Trees for Troops, you may make a donation at The Rocks or through the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation. 

Fun tree facts – and making the holidays easy – at The Rocks Estate

The Rocks Estate is one of the nearly 15,000 farms growing Christmas trees in the United States. That translates to some 350,000 acres planted in Christmas trees.

Here at The Rocks, which also serves as the North Country Conservation & Education Center for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, there are 1,400 acres of protected and carefully managed farm and forest land. The property was deeded to the Forest Society in 1978 with the stipulation that there be a crop in the field. For more than three decades, that crop has been Christmas trees.

That means that at The Rocks we get to bring some of the magic of Christmas to our customers, all while we’re helping to preserve open space in a beautiful part of the state and maintain important wildlife habitat. 

Here are a few more fun Christmas tree facts: 

*    *  The tradition of decorating evergreens at Christmastime was introduced in the United States in the 1800s and evolved quickly from tabletop-sized trees to the floor-to-ceiling trees we typically trim today.

      *  Christmas trees, taken randomly from forests, were sold commercially in the U.S. beginning around 1850.

      *   Franklin Pierce, the only U.S. President to hail from New Hampshire, introduced the first Christmas tree to the White House in 1853. 

          *   The first Christmas tree farm was planted in 1901 in New Jersey.

      *   It can take 15 years to grow a Christmas tree from seed to the typical height of 6- to 7-feet. (At The Rocks, we plant seedlings when they are 4 or 5 years old and tend them for the next 6 to 9 years before they are harvested. Each of our more than 50,000 trees is hand-pruned each summer for optimal shaping.)

      *   For every real Christmas tree harvested from a farm, up to 3 seedlings are planted the following year. 

      *   Over 100,000 people are employed at tree farms in the United States. 

      *   More than 25 million real Christmas trees are sold nationally each year.

At The Rocks we strive to grow beautiful trees – and to help make your holidays carefree and festive.

At our super shopper-friendly online shop, you may order your Christmas tree now and select a delivery date that suits your schedule for decking the halls. You’ll also find tree accessories in the online shop to further ease your tree trimming efforts. Our easy-peasy Christmas tree stand makes setting up your tree a cinch – just be sure to ask us to pre-drill your tree. We think this stand is so great that we offer it to our customers at cost – and shipping is free on this and all online items! If you’re tired of crawling under your decorated tree to keep it watered, check out our watering spout for easy watering through the holidays.

Beary Merry wreath

We also offer an array of beautiful, handmade wreaths, both online and at the farm. Our wreath decorators create new designs each season to complement our stock of favorites. You can see one of our wreath makers at work in this video. 

Take a peek at our online wreath shop to see our selection, which ranges from our Just a Bow wreath to our popular Frugal Yankee, the whimsical Beary Merry Christmas wreath, and the all new Snowflake wreath. We also offer wreath hangers and beautiful garlands in lengths from 10 to 40 feet.

Important dates at The Rocks:

If you’d like to tag-your-own tree and get in on our gaudiest tree contest, this weekend (October 20th-21st) is your last chance!

The Rocks opens for cut-your-own Christmas tree season November 17^th.  The farm and shops will be open daily (except for Thanksgiving Day) through Christmas Eve, with plenty of festive fun planned for the season.

So, come for the day, or make a weekend of it. We’ll see you at The Rocks!

Jumpstart your holidays at The Rocks’ easy online shop

At The Rocks Estate, it’s never too early to start thinking about Christmas. In fact, we think about the holidays all year ‘round. If you’re hoping to cross a few things off your holiday to-do list early, we can help!

The Rocks has a new, super shopper-friendly online store this year, and we’re ready to take your order – for a Christmas tree, wreaths, accessories, ornaments, even maple syrup!

When you order a Christmas tree or wreath from The Rocks’ online shop, you may choose a date for delivery – so you can order your perfect Christmas tree today and ask us to ship it any time between November 13^th and the week before Christmas. With a few minutes and a couple of mouse clicks, you can order the holidays now, and we’ll deliver right to your doorstep!

Online Rocks Estate shoppers may create holiday wish lists and add multiple shipping addresses. And all items include FREE shipping!

The Rocks online shop features farm fresh Christmas trees in a variety of sizes. This year, based on customer demand, we’ve added a Victorian Christmas tree – with a more open branch structure, reminiscent of the trees trimmed in yesteryear.

“Each tree’s going to be slightly different,” says Rocks Estate manager Nigel Manley. “It’s definitely like what they’d have had in Victorian times, but even 25 years ago, Christmas trees were like this.”

You’ll also find an array of wreaths, all handmade by our farm staff, and all the holiday decorating accessories you’ll need, along with ornaments like this year’s New Hampshire Christmas tree ornament, featuring one of our favorite local animals – the moose.

Ah, hassle-free, fun, easy shopping at The Rocks’ online shop. Just think of it as an early holiday gift!

Want to see how we select our mail order trees? Check out this video to see Nigel tagging trees in the field at The Rocks.

The Rocks Estate is for the birds – and bear and deer and…

Bluebird atop a Christmas tree

We’re best known at The Rocks for growing Christmas trees, but there’s more to the property than neat rows of fir trees lining the fields. With some 1,400 acres of managed farm and forest lands, The Rocks is home to countless wildlife species, including turkey, bear, deer, and an array of songbirds and raptors who nest here or simply pass through seasonally.

Northern Goshawk

Earlier this week we were visited by a flock of bluebirds, who perched in the Christmas trees, pretty as any ornament. Killdeer are summer nesters in our fields. After we mow the fields to keep the grass low between our trees, we often see Northern Goshawks and Kestrels, which both assist our Christmas tree cultivation efforts by hunting voles, which can damage and kill trees by eating the roots and bark.

With trails through open fields and woods, The Rocks is a popular place for birders. So, if you’re coming to one of our tag-your-own tree weekends this fall, or simply looking for a pretty place to explore amid the blaze of fall color, bring your binoculars along. You might see something unexpected!

The Rocks Estate is the North Country Conservation & Education Center for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

Tag-Your-Own Christmas tree at The Rocks Estate – and make it gaudy!

Dig out the Christmas tree decorations… tag-your-own tree season opens at The Rocks Estate this weekend! And with the varied colors of fall foliage popping, there’s no more beautiful time to visit the farm – and get a jump start on the holiday season.

The Rocks will be open for tag-your-own weekends from September 22^nd through October 22^nd. During that time, the two holiday shops at The Rocks will also be open, as will the extensive trails system on the property and self-guided tours of the interactive New Hampshire Maple Experience. As always, leashed pets are welcome to accompany their humans at The Rocks.

Tag-your-own tree seekers are encouraged to select a tree in the field and decorate it in their own unique style using ornaments, ribbons, and whatever else it takes to distinguish that tree as their own. The showier, the better – and easier to find come cutting time. Customers should return after the farm opens for the season, between November 17^th and December 24^th, to cut and pay for their tagged Christmas tree. 

To celebrate tag-your-own season, The Rocks is inviting customers to participate in a “Gaudiest Tree” contest on Facebook by posting a photo of their tagged tree to The Rocks Estate’s Facebook page. The tree with the most “likes” will be presented to that customer free of charge. Visit The Rocks Facebook page for details. 

The Marketplace at The Rocks and the farm store will both be open during tag-your-own weekends. The Marketplace features an array of goods from various New England artisans, as well as Fair Trade items, from pet goods and ornaments to jewelry and home goods. The Rocks farm store is filled with local maple syrup, along with jams and jellies, Rocks t-shirts and mugs, ornaments and decorations.

Whether you’re looking for your perfect tree, hoping to get an early start to your holiday shopping, or just want to enjoy the kaleidoscope of autumn colors and surrounding mountain vistas, we hope to see you at The Rocks this fall!