Rocks Estate offers year-round fun for groups and parties

Looking for a great place to host a party, or a fun and unique group outing? Well, The Rocks Estate can help you entertain in style!

The Rocks is a beautiful, versatile venue for events and parties large and small. Whether you’re looking for a fun place to bring your youth group for hands-on learning about the local environment and agriculture or a picture-perfect setting for your wedding, we aim to please!

We welcome groups to The Rocks year-round and offer a variety of experiential tours and natural history programs customized to your party’s interests. This year we’ve already played host to a Maple Experience birthday party, a Girl Scout Troop visiting the area from Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and a group touring the North Country in their antique cars.

The Rocks is also a popular venue for weddings. With unbeatable mountain scenery, beautiful formal gardens, and a versatile space to host large and small parties, we cater to brides and grooms to help make their wedding day one-of-a-kind special.

We invite you to call us (603-444-6228) or email to find out how we can help you create a wonderful party or group visit. Or just stop by The Rocks – the grounds and trails of the Estate are open year-round, dawn to dusk, and exploration is encouraged!

Enjoy the N.H. Maple Experience this summer!

This year’s crop of maple syrup is bottled up and stashed away for the year, but the New Hampshire Maple Experience returns to The Rocks Estate June 1.

Visitors are welcome to take a self-guided maple tour anytime from June 1 through Columbus Day. The Maple Museum will be open for interactive learning (check out our panoramic view of the museum on our website), and the scenery along the path to the museum is unbeatable – the mountains of the Presidential range, carefully restored historic buildings, and summer wildflowers thriving right through until fall foliage season.

While you’re visiting The Rocks, we invite you to explore our extensive trails system (open daily, year ’round, dawn to dusk) and bring along your smart phone to explore our Mobile Tour of QR Codes that detail the estate’s history and modern conservation work. Dogs are welcome, too, but please keep them leashed!

Oh, and if you missed our fabulous chef demos during sugaring season this spring, you’ll find deliciousmaple recipes from area chefs on our website!

Self-guided Maple Experience Returns June 1

Thanks to all who joined our New Hampshire Maple Experience this spring! We had nearly 700 visitors during the seven days of Maple tours, and it seems a good time was had by all.

If you missed the fun during sugaring season, no worries – the Maple Experience at The Rocks Estate returns June 1, when we’ll open the interactive and informative Maple museum to self-guided tours.

As always, the extensive trails system at The Rocks is open daily, year-round. Maps are available at the information kiosk adjacent to the parking lot, and visitors (humans and leashed canines) are welcome to walk the trails from dawn to dusk.

Consider bringing your smart phone along as you explore the historic Rocks Estate. That way, you can take advantage of our new Mobile Tour. With more than a dozen Quick Response (QR) codes, the Mobile Tour enables smart phone users to pull up information about the history, wildlife habitat, and forest management efforts at The Rocks.

And, yes, there’s information about the Maple Experience on the Mobile Tour, too!

Last chance to get your Maple Experience!

This Saturday is the final day of the season for the New Hampshire Maple Experience at The Rocks Estate!

Join us for hands-on learning about the process and long tradition of maple sugaring. Along the way you’ll tour the beautiful and historic Rocks Estate via horse-drawn wagon, visit our on-site sugar house and learn from fourth generation maple sugarer Brad Presby, and enjoy delicious maple syrup samples.

If pancakes and syrup aren’t enough to satisfy your palate, you’ll want to time your visit to enjoy the maple cooking demonstration by Chef Kirk from the Sunset Hill House in Sugar Hill. He’ll be at the Maple Experience from noon-1 making Maple Marinated Barbeque Shrimp; an endive salad with candied pecans, dried cranberries, and crumbled goat cheese and topped with Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette; and Maple Shortbread.

(For these recipes and others featured during past Maple weekends, check out the recipe page on the New Hampshire Maple Experience website.)

To find out more about the Maple Experience and all it includes, please visit the New Hampshire Maple Experience website. We hope to see you Saturday for the Maple Experience!

Celebrate Spring with the NH Maple Experience

The sap is running!

Spring has sprung here in the North Country, and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than by enjoying the New Hampshire Maple Experience! We opened the 2012 Maple season at TheRocks Estate on Saturday, and we’ll keep on celebrating for the next three weekends.

That means maple syrup tastings, chef demonstrations, horse-drawn wagon rides, and hands-on learning about maple sugaring.

This weekend we’ll welcome two local chefs to the Maple Experience, and you won’t want to miss what they’re cooking up. On Saturday, Chef Adam Parker from the Indian HeadResort will be here from noon-1p.m. dishing up a divine crumble salad with romaine lettuce, cranberries, blue cheese and walnuts topped with Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette. He’ll follow that with Maple-glazed Scallops with a Maple Beurre Blanc over pasta. Yum!

And if you missed Chef Orlo Coots of the Adair Country Inn & Restaurant last weekend, you’re in luck – he’ll be back at The Rocks on Sunday from noon-1 p.m. making his delicious Maple Balsamic Glaze, oh-so-good Whipped Maple Mascarpone, and delectable Walnut Angel Food Chiffon Cake.

Sour pickle face.

As if that’s not enough, the Maple Experience includes a tasting of our own local maple syrup, accompanied by the traditional fresh donut and sour pickle – the perfect blend of sweet and sour! We’re inviting all our Maple visitors to post a photo of their best “sour pickle face” on our Facebook page this season.

To find out more about the Maple Experience and all it includes, please visit the New Hampshire Maple Experience website.

Happy maple sugaring season!

Coming soon... more Maple Experience!

Heading out for a wagon ride through The Rocks Estate.

As the days grow longer toward mid-winter, our thoughts at The Rocks Estate turn from Christmas trees to maple syrup and a new season of the New Hampshire Maple Experience.

Maple Experience visitors learn firsthand about the age old tradition of creating maple syrup and sugar from the sugar maple trees abundant in our region. Our staff and volunteers at The Rocks lead visitors on a journey through the history of sugaring – dating back to the Native Americans and earliest European settlers here – right through to the modern process, with a trip to our sugar house, a horse-drawn wagon ride through our historic property, and a tasting of the maple syrup produced from the sap of sugar maples growing on The Rocks Estate.

To make the Maple Experience extra sweet, we’re adding a few new features to the program this year. The first is the option to enjoy sugar-on-snow, where we’ll heat syrup and drizzle it over snow to create a delicious toffee-like concoction that’s sure to satisfy the sweetest sweet tooth!

... and sour!

Syrup and pickles - sweet...

We’ve also invited some of the best local chefs to join the Maple Experience this year, and they’ll demonstrate their cooking styles as they create mouthwatering goodies to share – using maple syrup and sugar, of course!

One of our favorite parts of the Maple Experience is the maple syrup tasting visitors enjoy. We always recommend pairing the syrup with fresh donuts and sour pickles for a wonderful combination of sweet and sour. This year, we invite visitors to post their favorite “sour pickle face” photos to our Facebook page.

The Maple Experience will be held at The Rocks Estate March 17, 24-25, 31-April 1, and April 7. 

For more about the Maple Experience, please read our full article.