Mail order holidays ~ Christmas made easy at The Rocks

Golden Angle Wreath

The Rocks Estate is in full holiday swing! Yes, we realize it’s still only October, but our online shop is hopping! 

We know many holiday fanatics – like us – want to get started early. So, our online shop is designed to be super shopper-friendly (complete with FREE shipping on all items) to help make your holidays fun and easy – whenever you’re ready to get started on bringing the holidays home.

If you’ve ordered from The Rocks online shop before, you know you can order a Rocks Estate Christmas tree anytime between now and the holidays and pick the date you’d like your fresh, fragrant, farm-grown tree delivered right to your doorstep.

But it’s not just about the trees… At The Rocks online shop, you’ll find a festive selection of holiday wreaths, from classic to cute, along with garland, gifts, and accessories galore! If you’re in the market for a handmade wreath (or a few), check out our new-this-season Whimsical Wreath and Golden Angel Wreath. Another new treat now available online is our very own Rocks Estate maple syrup, made right here at The Rocks and available by the half-pint, pint, or quart.

Our online shop also offers accessories to make keeping your tree fresh and fragrant through the holidays simple, including a longtime customer favorite tree stand (be sure to ask for your tree to be drilled) and our watering spout (makes filling the reservoir a cinch – no more crawling through limbs and gift boxes!). 

Visit The Rocks online shop today – or whenever you’re ready – and get your holidays started!

Bus Touring at The Rocks Estate

While winter – and finding the perfect Christmas tree – is the most famous season at The Rocks Estate, fall foliage season is quickly catching on, as visitors enjoy the kaleidoscopic colors of autumn at the Estate and on the surrounding hills and mountains. Often, the fall visitors arrive via tour bus, and it used to be that the bus would pull in, the tourists would unload, take a few photos, climb back on board, and head to the next pretty destination.

Now, more buses (nearly 60 this year!) are coming to The Rocks, and the bus tourists are staying longer and experiencing The Rocks more fully – whether through guided tours of the property or expert-led discussions of the wildlife living in and around this historic 1,400-acre property, now the North Country Conservation & Education Center for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

Each group chooses a personalized visit to the Estate and is invited to select from a list of natural history programs. The most popular of these is a visit to the New Hampshire Maple Experience and Museum, housed in one of the many history buildings at The Rocks that have been carefully restored for modern use. The Maple Experience includes a virtual tour of the maple sugaring process, which happens in the spring when the sap flows through the sugar maple trees at The Rocks and is collected to make maple syrup. (Visitors are also welcome to visit the gift shop, where they’ll find maple syrup, along with an array of other great gifts!)

A group of visitors from the Midwest at The Rocks.

Other popular group programs at The Rocks include the moose & bear talks led by the Estate’s manager, Nigel Manley, who is an avid outdoorsman, and the Gardens of Yesteryear program, which uses hand-colored slides from 1933 to illustrate the timeless beauty of the formal gardens still maintained at The Rocks.

Whether you’re arriving via tour bus, or coming with your family to enjoy a picnic and tag-your-own tree, we hope you’ll visit The Rocks this fall and enjoy the beauty of autumn in New Hampshire!

Time to Tag-Your-Own Christmas Tree at The Rocks Estate!

A tagged tree in the field

At The Rocks Estate, we believe it’s never too early to start thinking about – and planning for – the winter holidays! On that note, we open this weekend for Tag-Your-Own tree festivities, complete with early holiday shopping, Christmas tree tagging, and the North Country’s magnificent fall foliage.

Once again, The Rocks will be open to Tag-Your-Own tree seekers autumn weekends, from September 28 & 29 through October 19 & 20. Visitors are invited to roam the fields at The Rocks in search of the perfect Christmas tree, “tag” it with their own decorations and personal flair, and return when we open for the traditional holiday season (November 23-December 24) to cut and purchase their tagged trees.

Fall color on Christmas Lane at The Rocks

Both the Marketplace at The Rocks and The Rocks Farm Store will be open during Tag-Your-Own weekends, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Shoppers are sure to find gifts for everyone on their “Nice” list, as well as festive decorations for the holidays. The shops feature an array of U.S.-made, locally-crafted, and Fair Trade items, from hand-painted ornaments and balsam-inspired soaps and candles to local jams and jellies and The Rocks’ own maple syrup.

Autumn is a beautiful time to visit The Rocks and take in the kaleidoscopic colors of the surrounding landscape. Beyond Tag Your Own tree seeking and getting a jump on holiday shopping, autumn at The Rocks is a great time to check out the New Hampshire Maple Experience, wander our extensive trails system, and learn more about The Rocks by taking a self-guided Mobile Tour of this picturesque property owned and maintained by the Society for the Protection of NewHampshire Forests. 

Learn more at TheRocks.org! 

Gift shop at The Rocks offers everything maple… and then some!

When you walk into the main building at The Rocks Estate to start your New Hampshire Maple Experience, you’ll notice a unique gift shop filled to brimming with locally made gift items and maple everything!

Gift shop manager Carleen Quinn says she brings in new items each season, along with longstanding customer favorites. This year she points out the life-sized wooden bears carved by a local artist as the latest and greatest.

Here’s her list of maple offerings at the shop, a boon for all lovers of maple:

* Maple syrup, one of a kind, made only here at The Rocks – all sizes in stock.

* Freshly made maple kettle corn – popped right here by the folks from Kingdom Kernels Kettle Corn Co. in Vermont.

 *Any kind of maple product anyone could want, including maple candy, moose maple pops, maple bites, maple cream, and maple sugar.

Be sure to take a wander through the shop during your Maple Experience!

Experiencing NH Maple via wagon ride

All aboard for wagon ride fun at The Rocks!

Horse-drawn wagon rides are a tradition at The Rocks Estate, during both Christmas tree season and Maple Tours. Here, writer and Rocks visitor Meghan McCarthy McPhaul describes the joy guests of all ages feel with a ramble through the farm.

A trip to The Rocks is always fun, but when the horses are there, the visit becomes downright enchanting. Like many kids, mine have a thing for horses. Even before they could talk, they would do their best to whinny from the back seat of the car any time we passed a horse in a field.

Our first visit to the New Hampshire Maple Experience was on a typical spring day – chilly, a little bit wet, but bright. We heard about the history of maple sugaring, learned from Nigel how to identify and tap a sugar maple tree, visited the sugar house, and even tried the sweet-and-sour combination of pickles and maple syrup, complemented by a fresh donut. But the highlight of our morning at The Rocks was the wagon ride.

The horses that pull the wagons at The Rocks are HUGE. Depending on the team, they are either Shires or Belgians, breeds of draft horses that can be as tall as 19 hands and weigh upwards of 2,000 pounds. The horses’ heads tower above even a tall adult, but they look down at curious visitors with gentle eyes, a characteristic that goes along with the breeds’ size.

The author and two of her horse lovers.

The men who drive these teams at The Rocks are always great about letting us approach the big horses and pet their noses. I’ll admit that it’s not just the kids who have a thing for horses, so does their mom. I welcome any opportunity to stroke a soft, hay-scented equine muzzle. It seems we are not alone in our love affair with these beasts of labor, as the horses tend to draw an enthusiastic crowd whenever they are at The Rocks.

After we said hello to the horses at the Maple Experience, we climbed on board the wagon and claimed a hay bale for a seat. The horses set to work, and off we went down the tree-lined lanes of The Rocks.

Each wagon has a guide along for the ride, to share little tidbits about the captivating human and natural history at The Rocks. The day we visited, we lucked out and had as our guide Barb Desroches – known to my children as “Ms. Barb,” because she visits their school to teach environmental education each month.

While the adults in our wagon peered into the branches high above to see if we could distinguish the sugar maples from the red maples along the way and peppered Barb and our driver with questions, the kids simply delighted in the gentle sway of the wagon and in the chilly air of the spring day.

My kids had a great time throughout the Maple Experience. They liked helping to tap a tree, seeing the steam billowing around the sugar house, and eating donuts dipped in sweet syrup. When asked about their favorite part, though, they all pick the wagon ride. “I liked petting the horses," says one. "I liked being up high in the wagon and looking out of the wagon and seeing the sap buckets on the trees and other things at the farm."

Once we returned to the main building, the kids gave a parting pat to the horses, we grabbed a bag of fresh-popped maple kettle corn, and we headed home happy and having learned a good deal about maple sugaring. I know that on our next trip to The Rocks we’ll all be looking forward to saying hello again to our great big equine friends.

Maple, music, and microbrews at 3rd Annual Maple Dinner

Maple, music, and microbrews come together April 13 for the 3rd Annual Maple Dinner at The Rocks Estate. Join us as we celebrate the conclusion of another maple sugaring season with local flavors – all while raising funds for The Rocks Projects Fund, which helps finance educational programs offered year-round at the farm. 

The dinner will feature maple culinary delights from Chef Joe Peterson, microbrewed beer from the Woodstock Inn Station & Brewery, and live entertainment from local musicians Barbara Desroches, Greg Odell, and Matt Hecklinger.

For more information and to make reservations, please visit our online calendar.

Sugarhouse magic: from sap to maple syrup

Sugar maker Brad Presby in his element.

Watching the watery sap of sugar maple trees morph into sweet maple syrup is nothing short of magic. This magic show takes place each spring in sugarhouses nestled into forests throughout New England, including our own sugarhouse here at The Rocks Estate.

Rocks manager Nigel Manley explains how the maple magic happens, complete with fire and billowing steam:

The basics of maple sugaring include boiling sap for a long time until you are left with syrup. Of course, the process is a bit more complicated, and there are a lot of details that have to fit together just right to make sugaring successful.  

When I first came to The Rocks Estate, I watched syrup being made on an old arch (the part of the sugarhouse where the fire is) and evaporator (where the sap cooks down) in the original Electric Plant. As an avid photographer, I captured the equipment on camera. That turned out to be lucky for me, as the following season I had to assemble the arch and was able to use the photographs as a guide.

I had arrived from the UK not knowing what maple syrup was, never mind how to make it. I managed to get the sap lines up and tap the correct trees, but then was tasked with properly assembling the equipment of the sugarhouse. I had a friend help pick up the large back pan of the evaporator and set it in place. The front pan, or finishing pan, was lighter and could be placed easily. The float was a different story: I had to have the sap coming in quickly enough to keep the pans from burning, but not so quick as to be boiled off too slowly, which would create only dark syrup, rather than the more precious light maple syrup.

I managed to get the arch and pans working and actually made syrup, all while explaining to guests what I was doing! Still, something didn’t seem quite right. I finally realized it was my British accent; how can you possibly explain a northern New Hampshire tradition with a strong British accent?

A local sugarer, whose family has been making maple syrup for several generations, came to my rescue. Now, visitors to the New Hampshire Maple Experience tours learn the art of sugaring from Brad Presby, who is secure both in his Yankee ways and his good North Country vernacular.

Visit the New Hampshire Maple Experience this spring, and you’ll meet Brad at our sugarhouse, where he’ll show you the magic that is making maple syrup.