Create a self-guided Maple Experience this summer

Spring wildflowers

If you missed the New Hampshire Maple Experience earlier this spring, don’t fret! You can create your own self-guided Maple Experience this summer at The Rocks Estate. A walk on our Maple Trail leads you along old stone walls, through our sugar orchard, and to the sugarhouse and Maple Museum. Along the way you’ll spot wildflowers, birds, and mountain vistas.

The sugarhouse and museum reopen June 1 (the same day as our 33^rd Annual Wildflower Festival), but the trails at The Rocks are open year-round, every day, from dawn to dusk.

The Maple Trail begins at the parking area, where you’ll head up the grassy path to the right of Fanny’s Playhouse and turn left into the woods. The wide trail leads visitors through the forest and past the site of the Glessner Family’s “Big House.” John Jacob and Frances Glessner created The Rocks in the late 1800s, and their family spent summers here for many years. While the 19-room mansion designed by Isaac Elwood Scott no longer stands, the Maple Trail passes by the bee house, where Frances kept bees for a time. (Read more about the fascinating history of The Rocks here.) 

Beyond the bee house the Maple Trail turns left through a break in the stone wall and meanders down through the sugar orchard. Look for the blue and black sap lines running through the trees. Interpretive signs along the trail explain the process of maple sugaring, a springtime ritual at The Rocks and throughout New England for many generations. You’ll learn why sap flows in sugar maple trees during the warming days of early spring, how to identify a sugar maple from other trees in the forest, and some of the history of sugaring. 

The trail ends at the former sawmill/pigpen building, constructed in 1906 and carefully restored for use as The Rocks’ sugarhouse and Maple Museum. (Take a look inside the Museum with our online panoramic view.) In the sugarhouse, you’ll see some of the equipment used to boil sap into maple syrup and sugar and view a video of the sugaring process. The interactive museum features both modern and historic sugaring equipment. Both open June 1. The magnificent view from the building is of Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range.

To return to the parking lot, head up the road (to the left, as you’re looking at the mountains) a bit and follow the signs back into the woods. The trail winds up the hill and back to Fanny’s Playhouse, where you’ll find maps and information about some of the other trails at The Rocks.

A walk along the Maple Trail takes 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how long you spend taking in the scenery, reading the signs, and enjoying your time in this beautiful place. Leashed pets are always welcome at The Rocks.

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.