Yep, my Local Neighborhood Hop Farm! Last week, I visited Ploughmonday, a small scale organic hop farm about 3 miles from my house. He’s growing Chinook, Cascade, Fuggles, and Magnum, all completely organic. It’s pretty much a one man operation, with a few occasional hired workers. Looks like a HUGE amount of effort, but fortunately he’s a young guy. He’s in the process of constructing a dryer for this fall’s crop. I hope that he’ll do internet sales…he really wants to sell directly to homebrewers and I’m trying to convince him that’s the way to go. I’ll keep everyone informed of his progress and post a few pics this week sometime. It’s really cool to have a source of organic hops so near by, but if I had ever considered having a hop farm, seeing what it takes has definitely made me change my mind!
Sounds like a cool story. Does this hop farmer have a website?
Does anybody know what the hardest part of hop farming is? Training the bines or harvesting?
Not much of a website, but it’s here…ploughmonday.com
He’s built a special contraption for maintaining his trellises and training the bines. Real Rube Goldberg stuff…I’ll post a pic of it later. If you harvest by hand, I’d think that would be the hardest part, but he’s planning on contracting with a mechanical harvester.
How about “pick your own”?