The Rocks' shops OPEN November 2nd!

We are so excited for the holiday season to start that we’re opening both our wonderful gift shops at The Rocks Estate NEXT WEEK! That’s right, both the Rocks Marketplace and the Rocks Gift Shop will be offering up holiday gifts, decorations, and good cheer daily, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., from November 2^nd right through Christmas Eve.

(Please note The Rocks will be closed Thanksgiving Day.)

Each year The Rocks staff searches throughout our region to bring wonderful new items to our Gift Shop and Marketplace shelves, and we’re proud to offer myriad locally- and regionally-crafted goods, from pottery and preserves to handmade soaps and candies to festive ornaments and intricately decorated wreaths. And because variety is the spice of successful holiday shopping, we make sure to have something for everyone on your gift list: kids and grandparents, friends and neighbors, even your pets!

This season at the Rocks Marketplace, shoppers will find an array of offerings from local artisans. These include beautifully made, hand-painted pottery from Joan Hannah, a retired farmer and former Olympic skier from Sugar Hill; hand-made goat milk soap from Hillary Tuite McMahon of Wild Oaks Farm in Landaff; outdoors-inspired jewelry from Emily Mouchon of Hunt Fish Maine; old-fashion candy from Country Cupboard Candy of New Hampshire, and countless other regional items.

For that hard-to-find gift for the guy (or gal) who has everything, check out the Pocket Monkey, a 12-in-1 tool that fits in a wallet and can open a bottle or a letter, fix your eyeglasses, peel an orange and more. To add a little ambiance to someone’s home, pick up a Bottle Wick, which can turn an empty wine or ale bottle into a classic oil lamp – and is made in Hancock, N.H. For family fun, the Cider Time Press, skillfully made by Maine craftsmen, is a compact cider press for home use.

Holiday shoppers will find ornaments, Rocks Estate maple syrup, and a beautiful selection of holiday wreaths, in the Rocks Gift Shop. And remember, The Rocks opens for Christmas tree sales, including Cut-Your-Own, November 21^st.

Can’t make it to The Rocks this holiday season? Don’t fret… we’ll deliver the holidays right to your doorstep! Our online shop offers fantastic gifts, fresh-cut trees, wreaths, ornaments, and all the accessories you need to make your holiday happy and bright!

However you shop, The Rocks is ready to help you bring home the holidays!

The Giving is Easy at The Rocks Online Shop

As the winter holidays approach, the giving is easy at The Rocks Estate. That’s especially true with this year’s new Gift Giving Made Easy offerings on our online shop.

Our Gift Giving Made Easy goal is to allow our customers to sit back, relax, and choose from our New England-centric gift packages, all from the comfort of home. As always in our online shop, shipping is free. If you live locally, we’ll even deliver your order of five or more gifts directly to your home or office!

There’s nothing more New England than maple syrup, and our online shop has several maple offerings, including the new Maple Sap Bucket package: two varieties of pancake mix from White Mountains Canning Company of Lancaster, New Hampshire, paired with two grades of The Rocks’ own maple syrup, all assembled in a real sap bucket!

Coffee connoisseurs will love the gift of locally-roasted coffee wrapped up with two moose mugs, handmade and painted by local potter Joan Hannah of Sugar Hill. For the popcorn lovers on your list, the trio of kettle corn flavors – plain, On Fire (jalepeno), and Maple – is an easy gift choice, and made in Vermont by Kingdom Kernel Kettle Corn. And the sweetest sweet tooth will be happily satisfied with our assortment of confections from Country Cupboard Candies.

Online shoppers may also order a perfect Christmas tree, cut fresh and delivered right to your door, plus hand-decorated wreaths ranging from whimsically fun to perfectly holiday festive, beautiful holiday ornaments, and decorating accessories. 

It’s all as simple as a few mouse clicks, and shipping is always free. Yes, the giving is easy at The Rocks online shop… Let us help you bring the holidays home!

Merry Wreath Makers at The Rocks

Pam Dexter outside the blacksmith shop at The Rocks Estate

There is a small and imaginative band of women who arrive at The Rocks Estate in November, before the hustle and bustle of the holidays has brightened the stark landscape of pre-winter. Armed with glue guns and ribbon, pinecones and berries, these Merry Wreath Makers work as hard and as secretly as Santa’s Elves through the quiet days of November and into the jolly arrival of December.

Their mission: decorate thousands of plain circles of fragrant greens to create beautiful, festive, and whimsical wreaths that will adorn hotel lobbies, covered bridges, and countless front doors locally and across the country.

The Merry Wreath Makers at The Rocks – Pam Dexter, Janet Hill, Bouquette Jones, Hilary Tuite, and Julie Ferland – decorate more than 2,000 wreaths each year. Their creations get shipped to mail order customers, carted to local inns, and picked up by happy holiday shoppers at The Rocks throughout the season.

The wreaths arrive unadorned at the start of November from suppliers in the northern reaches of New Hampshire. These blank slates of green are piled in the former blacksmith shop at the historic Rocks Estate, where boxes of pinecones from Maine, dried statice flowers and canella berries, and yard upon yard of festive ribbon mingle with dusty old carriage bolts and horse shoes sized for working steeds.

Bouquette Jones

Hill wears colorful wreath earrings to set the mood. But they hold off on the Christmas music until around Thanksgiving, when hundreds of wreaths have been decorated and moved to cold storage, and many already sold.

The Rocks’ online shop lists a dozen unique wreath styles, from the best-selling Rocks Traditional Wreath – trimmed with a pretty combination of pinecones, statice, and cinnamon sticks – to the endearing Chris Moose Wreath. But sometimes the Merry Wreath Makers simply follow their whimsy each day, adding berries here and pinecones there, tucking bright red cardinal ornaments and berries into the greens for a pop of color.

Dexter makes all the bows – some 3,000 each year – starting in March and working through the summer to restock before wreath-making season.

Once the wreaths are decorated, they’re hung on wall rails, where Vanessa Francis, who operates as wreath quality control officer at The Rocks, gathers them by the armful to load onto the trailer parked outside. From there, the wreaths are transported to cold storage and hung by style in a barn out back, by the lot that will be filled with fresh-cut Christmas trees come Thanksgiving week.

On busy December weekends two staff members are tasked solely with moving wreaths from storage to the Farm Store, where customers swoop them up nearly as soon as they’re restocked.

For those who like to deck the halls early, The Rocks Marketplace and Farm Store are open daily now through December 24^th (closed Thanksgiving day) from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Our Christmas tree lot opens November 22^nd, when the farm will also begin Cut-Your-Own tree season and related holiday activities.

We hope to see you soon at The Rocks!

A day at The Rocks: Christmas trees, wagon rides, good cheer, and a touch of holiday magic

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul Blogs for The Rocks Estate and the New Hampshire Maple Experience. This is her account of her family's recent visit to The Rocks to select a Christmas tree.

My family makes the quick drive to The Rocks Estate each year to find our Christmas tree. While the experience varies from year to year, it’s always festively fun – and a bit magical.

Last year, the kids tromped happily through the fields to find our perfect tree. I lost track of how many gleeful cries of, “This one is perfect!” we heard before finally settling on the tree we would cut and bring home to trim. There’s a common idiom about “a kid in a candy store”… well, a kid in a field of Christmas trees is just as happy!

On tree seeking day this year it was a bit chilly and windy, even for my hardy North Country kids, so we opted for the easy route and headed to the retail tree lot. There, we found a fantastic selection of already-cut Christmas trees. We hemmed and hawed between the Fraser firs and the Balsam firs and ultimately selected the latter. (We had measured the space our tree holds at home before heading out. These tree selection tips are helpful!)

Each holiday weekend at The Rocks, there is a local group whose members are standing by to help tree seekers (and who happily accept tips to help fund their organizations). Our Christmas tree elves were from Littleton’s Daisy Bronson Middle School Student Council. We showed them which tree we wanted, and they carted it off to be processed for pick-up out front. Other groups helping this year are the sophomore and 8^th grade classes from Littleton High School. Inside the Rocks Marketplace, the Profile Booster Club sells beverages and treats for hungry holiday shoppers.  

A visit to The Rocks really feels like a community event!

Before picking a tree, my kids wanted to say hello to the huge horses who pull the wagons carrying visitors around the historic Estate. While time didn’t allow us to take the tour this visit, we’ve enjoyed it in the past, and each time we learn something new about The Rocks from the friendly guides on board. This trip we said hello to the 1,900-pound Sampson and his wagon mate Giovanna. Their handler cheerfully answered our questions about the huge and beautiful horses and their special shoes, which allow them to gain traction in the snow and dirt they work in, both at The Rocks and in their other job – logging the woods of Vermont.

(Reservations are recommended for the wagon rides, although walk-ons are allowed if there is space. To make a reservation, email info@TheRocks.org or check in when you arrive at the farm.)

After selecting our tree, we popped into the Farm Store to peruse the ornaments, wreaths, Rocks Estate maple syrup and other holiday goodies. Next, we headed up to The Rocks Marketplace and all the fantastic holiday fun it holds. From locally made chocolates and pottery to fun home décor and beautiful scarves, the Marketplace is bursting with festive holiday and gift items – and friendly Rocks workers, too! For more about the shops, check out this post. 

On our way to the Marketplace, we ran into The Rocks’ very own Green Father Christmas, all decked out in his evergreen-hued robe. He approached us and handed each child a small fir tree seedling. We’ll follow the instructions on the attached tag (which also indicated the trees are sponsored by the Bank of New Hampshire) to pot our seedlings through the winter and plant them outside when the ground thaws.

Throughout this year’s outing to The Rocks, we could smell sugar in the air, as the friendly folks from Kingdom Kernel Kettle Corn cooked up fresh batches of their kettle corn. Tradition dictates that we bring a bag of the salty-sweet goodness home along with our Christmas tree, so we stopped in on the way to the car. We sampled their yummy Snickerdoodle flavor, but ultimately stuck with our favorite Maple Kettle Corn.

There are as many ways to enjoy the holiday season at The Rocks as there are visitors to the farm. Some families visit the nearly life-size wooden snowpeople (made locally and available in many sizes for purchase at the Marketplace). Others make a weekend out of their Rocks visit with the Christmas Memories vacation package, offered in conjunction with area inns and hotels. And many folks who have moved away order a Rocks tree or farm-made wreaths for friends and family every year from the online shop.

If you’re lucky enough to visit The Rocks during the holidays and find your perfect Christmas tree, you’re guaranteed a grand time and plenty of holiday cheer!

Holiday shopping made fun and easy at The Rocks Estate

Amid the considerable joy and festivity of the holidays comes the sometimes not-so-enjoyable task of finding gifts for all the good boys and girls on your list. Well, The Rocks Estate can help!

With two shops filled to brimming with holiday goodies and unique gifts (plus our super shopper-friendly online store), your holiday shopping at The Rocks will be fun and easy.

Our gift shop, located in the former electric plant building at The Rocks, is brimming with handmade wreaths, crafted right here at the farm and featuring a merry assortment of designs, from simple bows and ribbon to whimsical forest characters and adornments of berries and other seasonal flora. Shoppers will also find ornaments, fresh garland, birch deer, and Rocks Estate items in the gift shop.

The Rocks Marketplace, located in the red barn, is a showcase of goods from more than 30 regional artisans, from ornaments and pottery to homemade fudge and local books and music. Highlights include handmade Deeda’s Baskets, crafted by Vermont artist Linda Lomasney; jams, jellies, and soups from White Mountain Canning Company; and festive hand-poured chocolate pops from RHD Candy Company – perfect for stuffing stockings!

Both shops are open daily through the season from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. C’mon in and cross some names off your gift-giving list!

Of course, while you’re here, there’s lots of holiday fun happening, too. The Rocks is open daily through Christmas Eve for cut-your-own tree seekers, and we always have a fine selection of freshly cut Christmas trees in our retail lot as well. Weekends are chockfull of festive events. Check out our online calendar for more information.

Happy holidays – and we’ll see you soon at The Rocks! 

Holiday Shopping at The Rocks Estate

We love Christmas at The Rocks Estate! From our beautiful, fragrant, farm fresh Christmas trees and handmade wreaths, to our two shops and our festive activities, we strive to be a one-stop holiday destination.

While you’re visiting the farm – either in person or at our online shop – we invite you to peruse our fine selection of gifts and holiday decorations. With two shops at the farm, we’re sure you’ll find something for everyone on your list!

Our Rocks Marketplace features Fair Trade offerings and unique items from several New England artisans, running the gamut from pet goods and holiday ornaments to jewelry and home goods.

Our Farm Store showcases some of the goods produced from The Rocks during our other seasons, including maple syrup made from the sap of the sugar maple trees on the farm as part of our New Hampshire Maple Experience. You’ll also find jams and jellies, Rocks t-shirts and mugs, ornaments and decorations. The store also sells The Rocks’ famous birch deer, with proceeds donated to Trees for Troops, and pottery from local artisan (and former Olympic ski racer) Joan Hannah.

We hope you’ll make The Rocks Estate a part of your holidays this year!