Hops Stringing - 2016 @hawksbillhops

 The growing season is underway at Hawksbill Hop Yards.  It's hard to believe that May is already done with, and here we are in June.  The bines are racing to the top of the trellis already - they'll grow vertically through the Solstice, and then they will begin branching sideways, eventually growing burs and then flowers, which we call cones.

This year David and I decided we might hire the crew from ShenPaco Industries to come out and help with stringing.  They were helpful during last year's harvest, and I'm told they really like to work at the hopyard.  I'm pretty grateful for all they do.

Here are a couple of links to posts showing the guys at work last year - they were out helping with some weeding during the growing season, and again at the harvest.

http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2016/03/spring-weeding-hawksbillhops.html
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-2015-hops-harvest-hawksbillhops_19.html

We'll have them back out in six weeks to 2 months from now, when it's harvest time.  They're great workers and it's always great to see them get into it at the farm.

Spring Weeding @hawksbillhops

Last weekend I took a walk through the hop yard to have a look at what we were going to need to do to get underway for the year.  Afterwards I walked down the hill into David's wood lot and we made some plans while he took a break from busting up a red oak that had fallen during the winter.

We had left up about 150 of the coir strings after the harvest - the first year yields on our Goldings and Fuggles weren't worth picking, so we left the bines up for a few more weeks of sunshine.  The fall weather changed so quickly on us that we never took them down, but we knew that needed to be a high priority.



David was making plans to bring our friends from ShenPaco out to do some work around other parts of the farm, so we decided we would work with those guys again for a couple of days of weeding.

He sent along some photo highlights.  That first one is of Kenny, up in the basket doing some work on the high cable at the top of the trellis.  That cable is stretched across the matrix of the trellis at 16 feet, so he is really up there!

In the second photo, the rest of the team is working on weeding the rows.  From the location, I'm guessing this is one of the Columbus/CTZ rows at the far eastern edge of the yard.  There was a lot of skunk cabbage in the area there - probably some hard work to pull all of it out!

Now, the final photo of the day is one David took after they completed their work, just before that little snow squall moved through on Thursday afternoon.  Looking good!

David had bush hogged out many of the larger the winter weeds before the team got started on the rows.  We have fescue in as a cover crop, and that is doing the job for us in the drive rows.

Now that this key piece is taking care of, we have a couple of activities ahead before the growing season begins.  We'll get some litter spread across the yard for nutrients, and then David is going to make a pass with pre-emergents to help us keep down some of the weeds.

We'll have another spring planting event this year in April or May - we haven't set the schedule yet.  We are adding a row of Chinook in the blank row we had left between the Chinook and CTZ, and we are going to take out the half row of Centennial we put in as an experiment so that we can replace it with another row of Fuggles.

I hope to save the Centennials in some planters until we can expand. I've had a couple of requests for this variety, like I did for the Chinook.  The Hawksbill Brewing Company team plans to use the Fuggles we grow in stouts and porters, so that new row is a must to serve our customers!

The 2015 Hops Harvest @hawksbillhops - Part 2

Grayson was up in the bucket, with David
driving, as we took the bines down from
the trellis.

The second day of the harvest dawned bright and early enough.  Well, that is, it dawned bright and early enough for David and Grayson, who were out working the field for an hour or so before I showed up!  But at last I did - by the way, at the scheduled time, so I wasn't late.

Our plan was to work on the CTZ/Columbus rows first, since they were the first to have cones.  In fact, there were ripe cones on this row as early as July 4, so I wanted to get them down soonest.

Here are the first few CTZ/Columbus bines
as we began taking them down.

Although we modified the set up when we moved to the Cascade rows, on this day of picking, we had the bucket set up with the tractor so that Grayson could cut the bines down from the top of the trellis, and the trailer was behind the old truck where I could take the bines after they were down.

We'd gone ahead down the row to cut the plants at two to four feet high so that we could keep Grayson moving up there while I hauled the cut bines off to the trailer.  When we changed the set up, it was simply to put the trailer behind the tractor so that we didn't have to keep moving the truck to keep up with everything.

Here's the SPI crew at work picking CTZ.  Still early in
the process - we had the bines stockpiled on the trailer.

With only two rows each of CTZ/Columbus and Chinook, and with each these bines producing less than the Cascades, we quickly made our way through the two varieties.  Our thought was to get our SPI crew, shown in the photo to the left, started on the CTZ so they could get the hang of what we wanted them to do before they got to the more productive Cascade, which would be on Friday.

We set them up on one of the long produce tables and the team got to work picking, putting the cones into produce baskets.  Once they finished a bine, they put it on the floor and either I or somebody else came around to put them in a discard pile - we'll compost the waste for this year.

Here's our first bin of hops - about four pounds "wet."

To the right in the photo of the SPI crew is a crate of sweet corn and some flats of tomatoes - on Thursday, one of David's Public House Produce customers comes by for a pick up.  When those items were gone on Friday, we were able to put the trailer in that spot and do all the work in the shade of the pole barn.

The team made their way through the first variety by late morning, so we went back into the field to bring in the Chinook crop, which they set out on after lunch, and finished by the end of the day.

Our haul on these two varieties was a total of about eight bins, which weighed about four pounds each - 32 pounds "wet" total.  We'd take these over to the HOP-N-ATOR 4000 next, so that we could dry them, and that's where the next post will pick up.