Sunday Dog Walk

Lately on Sunday mornings Tessie and I have taken to walking the length of the Hawksbill Greenway in Luray.  Back in 2011 we took this walk a lot, but lately we had tapered down and were only walking half of it. The walk is about 3.5 miles - hopefully we'll keep this up.

There is plenty to see along the Greenway, and even though it is winter and all the leaves are down, it's pretty scenic.  I took this first snap from along the bend at the south end of the walk - you can just see the old grain mill and old co-op building there.

(About the old co-op building...the co-op moved out to the 211 bypass a few years ago, leaving this one behind.  It's housed a few businesses since then, including most recently a pop-up craft market showing off local wares.)

After our walk, Tessie and I took a short drive around town.  The sun was starting to come out, so it highlighted a barn I'd never noticed before, even though I've probably driven by it 100 times.
The angle I photographed happened to include Kennedy Peak, part of Massanutten Mountain, in the background.  This peak is around 3,000 feet high, making it something of a high point on Massanutten, although you can't miss its distinctive shape.

It's pretty interesting to notice the wide range of weather conditions you can have in the winter.  It was overcast and practically snow flurries during the walk, and then the sun came out and warmed everything up.

That was a good day for Tessie and me.

Hawksbill Hop Yards - Varieties

An element of the business plan for Hawksbill Hop Yards includes selecting the varieties of hops we'll plant.  The deadline for ordering rhizomes via the hops co-op is February 1, so I have been working on making some selections for planning purposes.

Some of the useful information I have received from the co-op includes the suggestion that Cascade and Chinook are varieties that have done well, and a quick check of the varieties grown by the other members seems to confirm this.  I also ran some analysis based on the book Designing Great Beers, by Ray Daniels (Amazon link at the end of the post) to see what varieties were used in a few of my favorite beer types.

Daniel's method was to analyze recipes from many popular beers to determine the hop varieties used in them.  He then counted up the incidence of each to make totals.  The table below summarizes his analysis - my thought would be to build on the co-op recommendation with a couple of additional varieties chosen from those most frequently appearing in the popular recipes.

The choice of Cascade was confirmed; in fact, it occurred in the recipes most frequently and it was the most popular variety in IPA, American Pale, California Common, and American Brown.  Goldings was second place for frequency, and it was the most popular variety in English Pale Ale, ESB, British Porter, and American Porter.  So I am planning to plant these two varieties to start with.

Chinook, the other variety recommended by the co-op, is one of the top five most popular in the recipes, which I will take as a confirmation of its marketability.  It is my third variety.

Finally, while Cascade and Goldings fall in the lower end of the alpha "spectrum" - alpha acids being a major component of hops flavor, and Chinook falls in approximately the middle, it seems that I need to select a high alpha variety to cover all the basis.  Dan told me that he had good success with his first year Columbus, and checking the co-op page, I see a couple of growers planting Columbus.  Thus, even though Columbus isn't acknowledged in Daniels book, I am going to add it to my plan for the hop yard, with a fallback to Zeus, which is similar and often substituted.

Now to get to work on placing my order - hopefully all of these varieties are available in the quantities I need.  We'll order at the end of next week, and then plant in the late March - early April timeframe.


Here's the link to the book I mentioned above:

Watch This Space

This big Cat will be used to clear the land.

Well, I guess it is time to come clean on one of the reasons I'm cutting back on posting this year.  For the last couple of years, as I became increasingly interested in brewing and then growing hops, I started to put together a plan to grow them commercially - on a small farm, in a way that is trendily known as "hobby farming."

The plan really became to come together last October, during the trip I took out to go to the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction, and then up to the meeting of the Old Dominion Hops Co-op up in Purcellville - the post about it is here.

I'm excited about the new logo!

Clearing the land - maybe an understatement!

There are simply a lot of ducks to get in a row just yet, so I don't have a lot of details to post.  However, at the beginning of the year, I made some arrangements to get this project started on two rented acres near Luray.  The farm (actually a farm within a farm) is going to be called Hawksbill Hop Yards, and work on clearing the acreage is just getting underway.


I'll use this blog to  post periodic updates, along with a Facebook page (here), and eventually a business web site.  I'm really looking forward to it, and hope that my readers will get a chance some day to come out for a visit.

There's still a lot to do though - so I'll keep this first post short!

Our Icy Beaver Pond

Last weekend we arrived Friday night after dark.  It had been a week of temperatures below freezing, so when I got up on Saturday morning to take Tessie out, I was greeted by a view of the beaver pond over in the hollow - frozen solid.  I snapped a nice Instagram photo here later in the day.

I had a good chat with Brian (of Breakfast at Epiphany's fame - check the blog list to the right!) about the frozen pond.  He asked if we skated on it, but since I grew up in Florida, that was never a skill I picked up.  Mary may know how, but she's never let on, so the answer was no.

I have no doubt it would be safe on many mornings, but by the end of the weekend, the temps were holding in the 40's and the ice was starting to melt.  There were clear patches near the dam, and especially further back where the streams come into the pond.

I took a second photo on Monday afternoon.  The grass in the fens along the front of the dam is doing well with the little sunshine it is getting, and the lodge is barely visible as a bright spot right at left center of this photo - there are some rather large branches piled on it.

This is my first post of the year - that is the longest I've gone without a post since I started the blog in 2007.  I picked up a lot of extracurricular activities this winter; they will give me plenty to write about, but I won't be able to post as often.  I'll set a goal of trying to be sure and make 100 posts during 2015 - I love the writing discipline and exercise of this blog, and I hope my readers will stay with me.

Happy 2015!