Hawksbill Hop Yards - 2016

It's probably one of my favorite photos from last year - taken in mid-July when I was starting to see well-formed cones on some of the hop bines.  I'm using it in a direct mail piece to Virginia craft brewers.  This particular one was a CTZ/Columbus cone, and it was a treat to check out the lupulin that was already formed in it.  

While we will be busy getting the brewery together over the course of the next few months, we're not forgetting that we have a farm to run.  We're already planning what to do this year to get things started, for example:

January 2015 - Dan and David looking over the "field" where
we planted the hopyard.

• Buy an orchard ladder to allow us to do minor maintenance in the yard without bringing out the tractor
• Get rhizomes to fill the empty rows and spaces where we didn't get plants - we'll add a Chinook row, replace the Centennials with a second row of Fuggles, and get some Cascades to fill the spaces
• We already ordered the coir twine by grouping with three other farms - we got a good deal for a bulk order - I still need the w-clips
• Need to arrange for a litter application and get things rolling

We'll have a volunteer event, probably in April this year, to do a little clean up over in the yard, to pull out the Centennials, and to plant the two new rows.

Looking back on some of the photos of the early season activities, I can't wait to get to it!