Farming

Another row of Columbia Hop plants are in the ground. Some of the Multihead Hop plants I received last month got a little beat up in transit. http://greatlakeshops.com sent me a brand new tray of plants. Great Lakes is awesome

Darbro Farms Grower Number

Darbro Farms officially has a hop grower number. Appreciate the help from: http://www.usahops.org

Ready to Climb

We have been working hard in the hop field. Lime and fertilizer down. Nearly 1/2 of the hop coir is up. Could use a nice rain. It’s gone from muddy to a little too dry. Typical Kansas.

Annual hay bale pic

The hay meadow was baled yesterday. Had to make sure we got our annual haybale picture. Either the bales are getting smaller or Elsa bigger!

Hop irrigation

Got all of the main irrigation lines fused together. Need to rent the trencher next week and get them buried. I have some motorized valves on order. Will have to build/program an irrigation controller.

Owen helping water and sampling hops

Owen helped haul water for the hops field. He sampled a few hop cones. Came up with “pungent grapefruit” on the Cascade row. Since that’s the standard description for Cascade, he must have a nose for it!

Tire swing

Elsa and I took time out from weed eating to put up a tire swing at the hop field pond.

Simple fresh hop IPA recipe

5 gallon batch Grain Bill: 12lbs 2 row malt 2lbs Carapils malt Hops: 1.5oz Columbus (60min) 2oz Cascade (0min) whirlpool 2oz Cascade (filtered through Hop Rocket after chilling 3oz Fresh Cascade Hops (dry hopped 3 days) Yeast: San Diego super

A little dirt work!

Took the track loader down to the hop field and cleaned a few things up. Getting ready to build a better water tower. Fixed the pond dam up a little bit and did some general clean-up.

Getting cables up on new rows.

Two more rows of cables are up. The rows are near a terrace, made using the lift a challenge. The new Galena hop plants in these rows are doing well.