2015 Maple Experience is a wrap, but Maple fun continues at The Rocks!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the farm to enjoy the 2015 New Hampshire Maple Experience this year! While our official Maple Experience season is a wrap, there is plenty to do at The Rocks Estate throughout the year, and we hope you’ll visit us again soon.

If you missed the Maple Experience weekends, don’t despair! Check out our custom private tours – from maple to moose and wild flowers to wild turkeys, we’ll build a guided tour around your interests! (Visit our Blog post about custom tours, or contact us at (603) 444-6228 or info@therocks.org to learn more.)

And if you simply can’t get enough maple, join us Saturday, April 11, for our annual Maple Dinner at The Rocks. The dinner is catered by Chef Joe Peterson of Franconia, who skillfully works maple into each delectable course. The Maple Dinner benefits The Rocks Projects Fund, which helps finance educational programs offered year-round at the farm. Reservations are recommended. More information, including the menu, is available at our online calendar.

The Rocks’ also offers a self-guided Maple Experience tour during the summer and fall. From July through mid-October, visitors are invited to stroll the Maple Trail at The Rocks and visit the interactive museum. The trail meanders along old stone walls, through forest, field, and sugar orchard. Interpretive signs along the way share information about the Estate’s enchanting history as well as the time-honored tradition of maple sugaring.

Our hiking and walking trails are open year-round, and The Rocks hosts a variety of events and educational discussions throughout the year. To find out what’s happening, please visit our online calendar. We hope to see you at the farm soon!

Custom Maple Tours at The Rocks Estate

On weekends during maple sugaring season, syrup lovers flock to The Rocks to enjoy the New Hampshire Maple Experience. But sometimes folks are passing through during the week and miss out on the fun.

A young visitor from Texas learns how to tap a tree.

To accommodate those mid-week visitors, we’re offering private custom Maple Tours at The Rocks. The tours started quite by accident, really, when a few people called last year looking for a maple tour during the week. They ended up getting a two-hour private maple excursion with Rocks Estate manager Nigel Manley, and a new adventure was born at The Rocks.

“The thing I like the best when I’m on vacation is usually something that happens by mistake. You manage to meet the owner of a place, or you run into people who are really enthusiastic and knowledgeable about something you’re doing, and you learn from them,” says Manley. “People want that happy coincidence, and these custom tours allow us to make sure they get it.”

During the custom-made private Maple Tours, small groups – generally 2-5 people – get the full Maple Experience – in a timeframe that meets their specific scheduling needs. While the program can be adjusted to accommodate each group, generally it includes a short video covering the intriguing history of maple sugaring, a discussion on how to identify and tap a maple tree, a visit to the sugar house to learn what happens there, exploring the interactive maple museum, and a sampling of maple syrup.

“Both my 9-year-old and my teenager loved our maple tour,” says Tara Edelman, whose family visited last week for a custom tour at The Rocks. “It was really fun and informative.”

Custom tour visitors leave with a half-gallon of maple syrup – and many happy memories. To help hold onto the latter, Manley sets up a Pinterest board for each group with photographs from the day.

While maple sugaring season is short-lived, the custom Maple Tour is available year round – even when the sap is not running and the sugar house is not in operation. “It’s really exciting for people,” says Manley. “Even if they get to tap a tree in October instead of March, that’s pretty cool for them if they’re coming from someplace where maple syrup is not a regular springtime ritual.”

Beyond Maple Tours, The Rocks offers custom experiential tours year round, covering topics from the Estate’s formal gardens and captivating history to the art and science of growing Christmas trees and informative wildlife adventures.

Custom tours are $250 per group for two hours (and the maple tour includes a ½ gallon of syrup). To learn more or book a tour, call The Rocks at (603) 444-6228 or email info@therocks.org.

It's Maple Time!

We love winter at The Rocks Estate, but we’re also really excited to see the days growing longer, the sun making more regular appearances, and the sap buckets appearing on sugar maples around the property.

That’s right – its maple time! Maple sugaring season is always a favorite in this neck of the woods. Those buckets – and the more modern plastic tubing that reaches from tree to tree – are a sign that spring is on its way, and that our stores of maple syrup and sugar are about to be replenished!

A young guest helps tap a tree.

At The Rocks we love sharing the history, process, and pure deliciousness of maple season through our interactive New Hampshire Maple Experience. Visitors to the farm during maple season will hear about the long and intriguing history of this early spring ritual of the north woods, learn how to identify a sugar maple, and get a chance to tap a tree – the first step in collecting the sweet sap that is boiled down into maple syrup.

Other highlights of the Maple Experience include horse-drawn wagon rides through the estate and a visit to our working sugar house, where 4^th-generation sugar maker Brad Presby shares an insider’s knowledge of all things maple.

The Maple Experience culminates in a syrup tasting, complete with a fresh donut to savor the sweetness, and a tart pickle for contrast. That pairing is as much a rite of spring’s arrival as buckets hanging from trees and smoke rising from the sugar house.

The New Hampshire Maple Experience comes to The Rocks Estate this year on March 14, 21-22, 28-29, and April 4. For more information, please call us at (603) 444-6228, visit the Maple Experience website, or check our online events calendar. 

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.

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.

Maple sugaring step two: tree tapping

If you read our Maple Blog last week, you know how to complete the first step of making maple syrup: identifying a sugar maple from other species. So, now what?

Tapping a tree at the NH Maple Experience.

To get that sweet sap out of the tree, you need to “tap” the tree. That means drilling a hole through the bark to get to the sap. Timing and technique are key when tapping trees. You want to be sure to tap when the sap is flowing in the tree – when the nights are still cold, but daytime temps rise above freezing.

Here are some notes from Rocks Estate manager Nigel Manley about proper technique for tapping sugar maple trees to collect sap:

The first year I sugared I made a couple of novice mistakes, including failing to notice the snow depth when I went out to tap the trees. The snow that year was really deep and I was using a brace and bit to drill the holes. The easiest way to use the tool is to lean against it while drilling. This I did and got 120 buckets hung on the trees. Then the weather turned nice and the sap ran through the trees.

The warmer weather also melted the deep snow. Within 2 weeks of tapping, the snow level had dropped at least 2 feet. This meant that the buckets I’d placed earlier, now brimming with heavy sap, were well above my head. In removing the buckets to collect the sap, I took a bath in cold sap more than once. The locals had a good laugh at the British greenhorn trying his best to make syrup.

Lesson learned: in snowy years, tap trees at snow level, as it makes the gathering so much easier.

Most guests to our New Hampshire Maple Experience programs ask if taking sap out of the trees hurts them. The short answer is NO. If trees are tapped responsibly, removing the sap does not harm the trees. (As a general rule a tree should be at least 10 inches in diameter before it’s tapped. Trees between 20 and 25 inches can support two taps. Trees over 25 inches in diameter can handle a maximum of three taps. You should also be sure not to tap a tree too close to tap holes from previous years – at least two feet directly above or below old holes or at least six inches to the side.)

When a tree is tapped, the tree actually walls off the hole so that bacteria cannot get in. After the hole is walled off, sap will also not flow out of the hole. That’s why it’s crucial to time tapping just right. If a sugar maker taps too early, the hole may "dry out" before the sap has much chance to run. Too late, and you’ll miss the first sap runs of the season.

Many modern sugar makers now use plastic tubing, rather than metal buckets, to collect the sap. The tubing provides a bit more leeway in the timing of tapping, as bacteria has a hard time getting into this system and the tap holes don't dry out as quickly.

To see a demonstration of tree tapping, check out our video of the process, filmed at The Rocks Estate. 

Maple sugaring step one: ID your Tree

How does a Brit, transplanted to Bethlehem, New Hampshire, figure out which trees in the northern forest will yield the sweet sap that boils down to maple syrup? Here’s Rocks Estate manager Nigel Manley’s story…

Shaggy bark + long-forgotten bucket = sugar maple!

During my first sugaring season at The Rocks, it was definitely a challenge to figure out the art of making maple syrup. I hadn’t even tasted maple syrup until I moved to the States at age 23. Coming from the UK (where there is only one native maple – the field maple), the most difficult part of maple sugaring for me was trying to figure out which trees to tap.

Branching, buds, and bark are the three keys to identifying trees in winter, when we don’t have their distinct leaf shapes to tip us off as to their species. My first maple season, I set off into the snowy late winter woods to find sugar maples – opposite branches; buds that are small, sharp and brown to reddish-brown in color; bark that can be smooth on younger trees, but is shaggy on older trees.

I quickly found out that for a novice tree seeker, it’s pretty easy to determine opposite branching (which in this region means ash, red maple, or sugar maple), but getting a good look at buds that are 20 to 40 feet above me was nearly impossible.

To compound the challenge, I was wearing snowshoes – another thing I’d never tried in the UK. As I trudged through the forest, there was plenty of tripping, falling, and sliding between glacial erratics as I searched for the seemingly elusive sugar maple. As I looked high above into the branches, struggling to see those little buds, I kept crossing the backs of my snowshoes and toppling over.

Apparently, falling over in deep snow had an effect, as I soon had a revelation: the easiest way to find a sugar maple in a sugar orchard (which contains several species of trees) is to look for the tree trunks that have holes drilled into them from previous sugaring seasons. (Rarely, there's even a sap bucket left behind, as in the photo above.) One caveat to this technique is that it only works if you’re in a sugar orchard that has been tapped previously by a knowledgeable sugar maker.

At the New Hampshire MapleExperience, we teach visitors how to identify sugar maple trees – and we do it from the comfort and safety of a horse-drawn wagon. No snowshoes, no tipping over into the snow, just pure fun as we pick out ash, red maple, sugar maple, and New Hampshire’s state tree, the white birch, from the forests around the farm.

Did you know…. There are over 100 species of maple tree in the world (and seven in New Hampshire), and syrup is made primarily from the sap of the sugar maple. Other species, like the red maple and boxelder, may be tapped to make syrup, but the sap of the sugar maple contains the highest sugar content – roughly 2 percent – and produces a lighter and more flavorful syrup.

Keep your eyes on our Maple Blog for more about sugaring and the New Hampshire Maple Experience, from tapping trees and maple cooking demos to what happens in the sugar house and our interactive Maple Museum.

NH Maple Experience returns in March!

The New Hampshire Maple Experience will return to The Rocks Estate this spring, bringing with it all the tradition, sweetness, and fun of maple sugaring season! Dates for this year's Maple Experience are March 16, 23-24, 30- 31, and April 6.

The Experience includes an interactive step-by-step demonstration of crafting maple syrup – complete with a visit to the onsite sugar house – as well as a horse-drawn carriage ride through the historic Rocks Estate and a syrup tasting with the traditional pairing of sour pickle and homemade donut.

“Parents looking for kid-friendly events often bring their children to the Maple Experience, and inevitably the whole family ends up learning a lot about maple sugaring – and everyone has a great time,” said Nigel Manley, longtime Rocks Estate manager. “We keep the Maple Experience fresh by adding new features each season.”

Other highlights of the Maple Experience include a visit to the interactive maple museum and education center; the "Taste of New Hampshire Maple," featuring local chefs demonstrating how to make their favorite maple recipes; a relay race where participants are timed on how long it takes to fill a 10-gallon container (enough sugar maple sap to make one quart of syrup); and tasty treats from Kingdom Kernels Kettle Corn.

Reservations for the Maple Experience tours are highly recommended, but walk-ins are welcome on a space available basis. For more details, please visit our online calendar. To learn how to turn your Maple Experience into a weekend-long adventure, complete with a stay at one of our partnering inns or hotels, check out our Maple Experience Vacation Package.

See you this spring at The Rocks!