Tilling The Rows!!! Take 1.......

What a beautiful day to play in the hop yard! The weather here in Upstate NY is pretty amazing right now. Especially considering the horrendous winter we experienced this year! Being that it was almost 70 out today Crystal and I figured we would till the rows. 

Now mind you, we decided to do this hop yard on a budget mostly with the equipment and materials we have here on the farm and on the land. The locusts post came from the woods, the fields were part of the farm, the plow was found in one of the barns and retro fitted, and the plan was to use the farm tractors(we ended up buying a small tractor to toy with). 

So anyway, back to tilling the rows. We have a 5hp MTD rototiller that was "commandeered" from the family and we thought, "Aw heck, we can till with that!" 

I think I can, I think I can.....

Yea, about that, that was as much fun as going for a swim with a toaster! It was WAY too small for the job! So hopefully we can come up with a better solution fast, or before I bust my back any more with that thing! But hey, can't beat the view!

That's Bradley(the big Great Dane) and Fiona(the baby Boxer) and Crystal picking rocks!

At least we have two rows tilled! Only eight more to go!

Stripping bark....

I know I already posted today, but it was my first post so it doesn't count! We've been gradually stripping the remaining logs of their bark to get them prepped to be buried for the rest of their lives. 

Crystal using the draw shave to remove bark!

My wife is pretty amazing! She's all about this work.  It's tedious and labor intensive! One heck of a work out though! We're half way there!

Me shaving bark!

Starting our Hop Yard!

OK, so, I'm sure you are probably wondering who the heck I am... Well, I'm Greg and I love hops! With the help of my wonderful wife Crystal, we are going to start a hops farm in Ithaca, NY. 

Between the two of us, we have zero experience growing hops. The advantage we do have is that both of us grew up around farming. Crystal's father was a farmer all his life and she had serious exposure to agricultural farming. I, on the other hand, grew up in a family of office dwelling parents. Lucky for me, my older brother was keen on finding trouble while we lived in the city, so my parents moved us to the "country" where I ended up working for local farmers in my teen years. We bought my wife's father's farm and plan to convert the hay fields, little by little, into hop fields.

Hops

We are growing hops because I love beer. I make it, I buy it, I drink it, I love it. Our goal is to sell most of the hops we grow to local breweries. Although, I do want to keep some for my own use! In case you didn't know, hops are an integral part of beer! With out hops, those IPAs you love wouldn't have bitterness or crazy citrusy/piney aroma and flavor! Hops can impart so many different flavors depending on the cultivar used, time and/or amount added to the wort(unfermented beer), length of time dry hopped, amount used for dry hop, etc. Without hops, we would have to go back to using herbs and spices to balance the malt. It just wouldn't taste like beer. Well, at least not like beer that we have become accustom to!

Back to the farm! Our plan is to start with a half acre of hops. That's a whopping 480 plants! We are in process right now of constructing our hop yard! 

The plow wasn't heavy enough, so my father-in-law rode on it.

We dug up soil this past weekend to establish the rows for the little guys to grow up in. 

Hop yard in the works!

Ha, I say little guys, right now they are just tiny little baby rhizomes sitting dormant in a dorm fridge.

Fridge full of rhizomes

In a couple of years when they reach maturity (squeaky puberty voice and all!) they will reach 18 feet tall growing at as much as a foot a day and produce an astonishing 2 pounds of dried hops per bine!

Wikipedia

Oh, I forgot to mention, hops are a bine, I didn't misspell that, they are a BINE, not a vine! Weird right? You're curious as to what a bine is?  Well my friend, a bine is, "a climbing plant that climbs by its shoots growing in a helix around a support. It is distinct from a vine, which climbs using tendrils or suckers." (wikipedia.com). Awesome, eh? OK OK, I guess not all of us may be as nerdy about this stuff as I am, however, talking/writing about this gets me "hopped" up!

 

Poles for trellis

Right now I am working on finishing up the design of my trellis. In the next couple of weeks I will get pics posted of the construction of that. It should be pretty cool! In hind sight I should have done all of this last year, however, I kind of came up with the whole "Hops Farm" idea over the winter and didn't want to wait a year to start planting hops. So here we are. Impatient as I may be, I have high hops, haha, I mean hopes, for a great hops growing season!