Clearing the Hop Yard

David sent me a note last week letting me know that a full acre of the planned two acre hop yard had been cleared - he invited me out to help with cleaning up all the firewood-worthy felled trees, and promised not to make fun of me because I didn't know how to use an ax, maul, or chainsaw.  So I decided to join him on Saturday morning, and I talked my friend Chris into joining me.

The weather promised to be good enough for the weekend to start burning all the cleared brush as well.  It turned out that we arrived at the farm just in time to see him light the burn pile, with all the attendant drama, as shown in the first photo today.

We are starting the Hop Yards up in phases - this year we'll put in most of one acre's worth, and we'll phase in the second acre next year.  If all goes well and there's demand, we may even grow beyond that, either on David's farm or somewhere else...thus the name Hawksbill Hop Yards...it would be very cool if Page County ended up being the largest producer in the state, which really wouldn't take a whole lot of acreage.

I have enough photos and videos for a couple of posts, so I'll be publishing those during the rest of the week.

Here's a couple of short videos of some of the activities taking place during the day.








I'll leave the idea of expansion further into Page County for my dreams.  In the meantime, while I took one of my numerous breaks from whatever I was doing out there, I took a stroll around to check out the cleared land.  Here are photos from the northeast and northwest...the is the Blue Ridge in the background.  As a friend said, "Those hops are going to have a great view."