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News

  • Do Not Open Until Christmas 2030

    Anna Berry
    May 19, 2023

    Students begin the program in kindergarten by planting their own Christmas trees at The Rocks.

  • Construction Continues at The Rocks

    Anna Berry
    May 16, 2023

    Construction is on track at The Rocks in Bethlehem, with the extensive renovations inside the historic Carriage Barn well underway.

  • First Phase of Geothermal Project at The Rocks Completed

    Anna Berry, Will Abbott
    March 5, 2023

    The geothermal system will help turn the Carriage Barn become a net-zero building as it's renovated into the North Country headquarters of the Forest Society.

Caledonian Record: Annual Loading Of Trees For Troops Draws Big Turnout

December 1, 2022
The Rocks
Students pass trees to be loaded into a FedEx truck.
Students pass Christmas trees to be loaded into a FedEx truck. (Photo: Nigel Manley)

By Robert Blechl, Caledonian Record

BETHLEHEM — Braving a blustery wind and beating an incoming rain, community members, representatives of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, and local students turned out in strong numbers for the 17th annual tagging and loading of the Trees For Troops on Wednesday morning.

The trees collected at the local level will join thousands more nationwide that will go to military service members and their families in time for the holidays.

It marked the first year that the loading wasn’t done at The Rocks Estate, just up the road and where major renovations are advancing to convert the Carriage Barn into the northern headquarters for SPNHF.

Instead, the 2022 collection point for trees from local tree farms in New Hampshire and Vermont was the 23-acre South Farm, a Christmas tree farm just above Profile School.

The farm is owned by Nigel Manley, senior outreach manager at The Rocks, who this year retired after over three decades as The Rocks’ Christmas tree farmer.

Since 2007, the fifth-grade class at Bethlehem Elementary School has participated locally in the national Trees For Troops program and has taken the lead in tagging the several hundred trees brought to Bethlehem.

On Wednesday, 28 students participated.

“This is great,” said BES Principal Sue Greenlaw. “It’s one of our biggest classes.”

In addition to tagging the trees and then forming a human assembly line to load them into FedEx trailers, BES students in past years have done their own fund-raising by calling local businesses to raise money for the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation, the nonprofit charitable arm of the National Christmas Tree Association that puts on Trees For Troops.

“This year, we only did the tags and loading activity,” said Greenlaw. “The pandemic kind of stopped some of the other pieces that we used to do.”

 

Read the full article in the Caledonian Record (subscription required).

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Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests54 Portsmouth St.Concord, NH 03301
Phone: 603.224.9945Fax: 603.228.0423info@forestsociety.org
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