Standing up the Yard!!

In the construction of hop yards, this past weekend was one of the main events. We stood up all our posts!

The hop yard pre-post-plumbing!

 OK, so for those of you who don't know, hops are strung up on a trellis that has a height of 18 ft! Yep, you read that right, 18 ft!! So over the winter, Crystal, her father Bob, and I played in the woods cutting down locust trees and prepping them to 22 ft. That puts them 4 ft in the ground. Putting them in that deep protects them from frost heaving and gives them a good foundation so they don't fall over.

None of the tree was wasted, the tops turned into firewood to heat our house!

You guys have seen the previous posts of us using draw shaves to strip the bark at the bases of the posts. We did that so they wouldn't rot underground. The bark and sapwood layer hold a lot of moisture and when they are put underground, they tend to bring micro-organisms that expedite the decomposition process. So, strip them we did!

Stripped posts ready for service!

On Saturday, Crystal's step-father Eric, showed up with the backhoe ready to drill holes. We have a bit of experience drilling holes as we (Crystal, Eric, and me) have installed playgrounds for more than a decade. Eric for 15 years, Crystal for close to 13, and me (I married into the playground world) for 7 years. 

Eric on the backhoe drilling holes.

We use a backhoe with an auger attachment on the hoe so that we can drill and not have to drive around to get the dirt off the auger. Beats a skid steer any day!

We drilled and drilled, there were quite a few holes. While we made holes all over the field, Bob brought posts down with the four wheeler!

Every post needs a hole! I've got some drilling to do! 

I even put Crystal to work cleaning the auger off!

When we FINALLY got all the holes drilled, which took about four or five hours, we were ready to start tamping the bases of them and standing up the posts. I put Crystal and my sister-in-law Danielle in charge of tamping. That's when the fun began!

I put Crystal in charge of tamping the holes while Eric and I stood up posts. Notice the tiny 4 ft long tamp!

Eric and I took off with the tractor and a set of log tines, and rigged it so that we could stand up 22 ft long trees. Not so bad when you have hydraulics and a little bit of ingenuity!

One going up!

 We used a board in the hole that allowed the post to ride down without cutting the walls of the holes and filling it in. Worked like a charm. Once we got our rhythm we were setting a post about every 45 seconds to a minute. 25 post in under 20 minutes. We were jamming! The tamping girls couldn't keep up! Maybe we should have given them hydraulics!

 After all the posts were set, everybody went home. It was time for a much needed break! And some very tall beers!

Last post in the hole!

DONE!

We are so grateful for all the help!

Sunday morning we rolled out of bed, with a bit a soreness....and went back to work. My lovely wife and I still had to plant rhizomes and plumb posts. We decided we would plant all our Cascade rhizomes first.

Crystal planting Cascade rhizomes

240 of those little kids got stuffed in the ground and we were off to plumb those 18 ft high posts! Geez, who's idea was this?!? This is a lot of work!

Onward we pushed! Crystal and I plumbed those posts like it was our business, oh wait, it is! Crystal shoveled dirt in and I tamped the crap out of it! Yea, my shoulders are still sore. But we got it done! And it was pretty incredible, it wasn't two minutes after we finished plumbing the last post that a gorgeous rainbow appeared over our hop yard! I would say that's a pretty good sign!

The perfect end to a LONG weekend!

Thank you to everyone that helped with this crazy weekend!

Coming soon will be the construction of the cable trellis that will support the hop bines!