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!

Wildlife Habitat Trail tour this weekend!

The natural world around us is bustling with activity this time of year. If you’d like to learn more about the myriad wildlife habitats in northern New Hampshire, the animals who live there, and what they’re doing as we approach summer, join us this Saturday at Bretzfelder Park in Bethlehem for a guided tour of the new Wildlife Habitat Trail.

The 1.5-mile trail traverses several habitats, including wetland, beaver marsh, spruce-fir forest, and deciduous forest. Colorful and descriptive signs along the way explain the habitats and the wildlife living there. The trail was created through collaboration between the town Bretzfelder Park Committee and the Society forthe Protection of New Hampshire Forests, which owns and manages both Bretzfelder Park and the nearby Rocks Estate.

"My children had so much fun learning about the different animals and trees in the habitats along the trail, looking for signs of the animals who live there, and just exploring the woods," said one recent visitor to the Wildlife Habitat Trail. "And the adults in our group were just as enthralled with the trail and the information we found there as the kids were."

The Wildlife Habitat Trail is one of several trails included in the 77-acre Bretzfelder Memorial Park, which serves as a year-round outdoor classroom.

“The trail is a fun way for children and adults to discover and explore the natural world in our area,” says Priscilla Didio, a local naturalist and teacher who helped to design the trail and the interpretive signs along the way. Didio will lead the tour of the Wildlife Habitat Trail this Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m.

For more information about the guided tour of the Wildlife Habitat Trail, please visit The Rocks Estate’s online calendar.

Sowing the seed(ling)s and other Summer Fun

Planting from a bucket of saplings.

We’ve been busy this spring at The Rocks Estate planting saplings and fertilizing all 52,000 Christmas trees we have growing on the farm. 

In April we planted 4,000 Fraser fir and Canaan fir seedlings, which will grow into full-sized Christmas trees over the next 6-9 years. Next on the to-do list was fertilizing all the trees we have growing in various fields around The Rocks.

Even with Christmas many months in the future, we’re busy taking care of our trees in the field nearly all year ’round! Later this summer we’ll tackle the annual hands-on job of topping and shearing the trees to ensure they’ll continue to grow into full, beautiful, well-proportioned Christmas trees.

There’s plenty of summer activity beyond tending to the trees at The Rocks Estate, too. We’re gearing up for our 32^nd Annual Wildflower Festival on June 2 and the official opening of our Wildlife Habitat Trail at Bretzfelder Park the following week. Check our online calendar for more information. 

We also have weddings lined up through the summer, as well as a variety of groups coming to the farm for customized tours and talks on topics ranging from formal gardens and local heritage to maple sugaring and the wildlife living on and around the farm. To learn more about the array of experiential tours and educational programs at The Rocks, please visit our website. 

As always, our trails are open in every season, from dawn ’til dusk, so come on up and visit The Rocks this summer – we’d love to see you!

Mobile Tour Opens at The Rocks

There’s a new way to explore The Rocks Estate! Our Mobile Tour of the 1,400-acre property uses Quick Response (QR codes), allowing visitors to pull up information about some of the Estate’s historic buildings, the different types of Christmas trees we grow here, and the Forest Society’s wildlife habitat and forest management efforts at The Rocks.

Using their smart phones to snap a photo of the QR code (they look like abstract black and white designs) on each sign of the Mobile Tour, visitors to The Rocks are able to access historic photos of the Estate. Some of the codes also share knowledge from The Rocks’ staff about the various types of Christmas trees, helping visitors to determine which type of tree is best for them! There are 13 signs on the Mobile Tour.

“It’s a really fun and easy way for visitors to learn about The Rocks, whether they’re here to select a Christmas tree, visiting our Maple Experience museum, or just exploring our trail network,” said Manley. “History is very important to us at The Rocks, but we try to be a little bit cutting edge, too.”