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. 

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.

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!

N.H. Maple Experience starts this weekend!

Sap lines carrying the sap to the sugar house.

The trees are tapped, the sap is flowing, and the weather forecast looks fabulous for this weekend’s kick-off to the New Hampshire Maple Experience!

We have lots of fun in store for visitors during Maple season, which will run the next four weekends at TheRocks Estate. From learning the history and process of maple sugaring and touring our picturesque property via horse-drawn wagon to sampling our very own maple syrup and getting a taste of some delicious maple recipes, we plan to pack a wallop of a maple punch into your Maple Experience!

Chef Orlo Coots of Adair Country Inn & Restaurant will be on hand this Saturday from 11 a.m. – noon, cooking up three delectable treats: Maple-Balsamic Glaze, Whipped Maple Mascarpone, and Walnut Angel Food Chiffon Cake. YUM! Chef Orlo will show you some of his culinary secrets and tips for incorporating maple goodness into your own cooking. You won’t want to miss these tasty treats!

The New Hampshire Maple Experience opens for the 2012 season Saturday, March 17. Maple tours will be offered throughout the season, on March 17, March 24-25, March 31-April 1, and April 7, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. each day. We recommend making reservations, which you may do by e-mailing us at info@therocks.org or calling 603-444-6228.

To see what we're doing to prepare for maple sugaring, check out our latest YouTube video.

We hope to see you at The Rocks for some Maple fun!

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.

 

Maple Experience Opens June 1st!

The tree taps and metal buckets are put away until next spring, and this year’s collection of pure New Hampshire maple syrup has been bottled, but visitors to the beautiful and historic Rocks Estate this summer can still enjoy the New Hampshire Maple Experience.

Self-guided maple tours open June 1^st and run through Columbus Day weekend. Maple lovers may follow the signs to the Maple Museum, housed in one of the many historically renovated buildings at The Rocks. The museum is divided into two sections: the sugar house, where visitors enjoy a video tour of the maple sugaring process; and the museum, chock-full of historic sugaring artifacts and descriptions of the history and process of turning the sap of sugar maple trees into sweet maple syrup and sugar.

The Rocks is open daily from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and self-guided tours are available during those hours. The Maple Experience is also open to groups and bus tours. Call 603.444.622or email info@TheRocks.org for more information.

Maple Tours Start March 12th!

With the combination of cool nights and warm days, the sap is flowing here in the North Country of New Hampshire – and that means it’s maple sugaring time! Sugarers are looking to tap their sugar maple trees soon to start gathering the sweet sap to boil into maple syrup and sugar.

At the New Hampshire Maple Experience, we invite visitors from near and far to experience the joys of sugaring – and sample the finished product – during our Maple Tours. Participants will enjoy a horse-drawn wagon ride around the picturesque and historic Rocks Estate in Bethlehem, learn how to identify trees, help tap sugar maples, and visit the interactive New Hampshire Maple Experience museum and sugar house to see the process in action.

Tours run weekends through March, and the first weekend of April. To learn more about the New Hampshire Maple Experience and to reserve your Maple Experience Tour, please visit us online.

To see a video on how to tap a sugar maple, visit our YouTube page.

Tree ID is Key

With several species of maple growing in the North Country woods, the first step to maple sugaring is determining which trees to tap. While red maples and silver maples produce sap that can be boiled into syrup, the preferred species is the sugar maple, whose sap has a higher sugar content.

When the maple sugaring season begins, there is still snow blanketing the ground, and the trees are still winter bare. But if you look closely at the buds emerging at the tips of the branches, you’ll be able to pick out a sugar maple from a red maple. Bark, branch placement and other hints tell sugarers what they need to know in the first step of making syrup – which trees are the sugar maples, whose sweet sap boils down to maple syrup and sugar.

Tree identification is critical to efficient sugaring – and it’s one of the many things visitors to the New Hampshire Maple Experience learn. Check out our latest YouTube video for a few Tree ID Tips.

For a peak of our interactive Maple Experience museum, which is also open in the summer and fall months beyond sugaring season, visit our panoramic tour.

Sugaring Season Starts Soon!

Here in the North Country of New Hampshire, we’re still buried in several feet of snow and enjoying all the beauty of the mountains in winter. But the days are getting longer, and soon the daytime temperatures should be warm enough to get the sap flowing through the sugar maples. That means maple sugaring season is just around the corner!

At the New Hampshire Maple Experience, we’re gearing up for another busy spring of showcasing the sugaring process, from sap collection to the delectable finished product. Our Maple Tours start March 12 and run weekends through April 2 at the historic Rocks Estate.

To see the historic building that is home to the Maple Experience museum and sugar house, view our latest YouTube video.