Pfister Pfarms - A hobby hopyard

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If you did the drip irrigation over would you use the same setup (emitters, line, etc)? I have a 30' foot run with 10 plants on that I'm going to hook up to a rain barrel.
 
Yes, but I would tweak it. In fact, ill be doing it over next spring, when ill drop the lines down, closer to the ground (under 12 inches). I will shift the 1/2" line and add double the emitters, so that it drips on both sides of the plant. And finally, the steel containers will be replaced by plastic so that my filters stop plugging with rust.
 
Some images from around the yard these past few days:

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Here's a bine that broke itself because I didn't untangle its tip. This has me questioning the use of coir rope next year:

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Considering have some t-shirts made up:

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And I've got to get going to work, so I don't have time to make this link into a nice video-link. A sparrow took offense to me being in my field and forced me to shelter between the rows of plants while I filled my water barrel.
https://video-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xpt1/v/t42.1790-2/11681565_10153535509218313_1371425923_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjk4NiwicmxhIjo1MTJ9&rl=986&vabr=548&oh=fd1c4f03b4950407f0bd7fc455ca587e&oe=55955C2F
 
It's been 15 days since I last posted... Wow, how small those plants were two weeks ago! I had a baby, a daughter; my first. That's been eating a lot of my time, but the oldest step son and me, we upgraded the irrigation to two emitters per plant. The yard looks quite full, the neighbors are all anxious to talk about it and how they no longer think that I'm crazy. I had one plant inexplicably fail. No signs of topside damage, I suspect something went after the roots. I'll dig it up when I'm sure that the plant is done-done. Found my first cones today, cascades win the race! But Chinook and centennial have plenty of burs and are not far behind

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Wow! That looks amazing. And the hops are cool too!

Congrats on the daughter. That is exciting.

Can you imagine your plants next year? They are looking great. I am living vicariously through you. Please keep up the excitement and progress!
 
This is incredible! you've had such great success. Youve managed incredible things from your first years, mine have mostly stagnated around 5-6 feet, with one or two that had started to burr up last week. Ive definitely learned some things this season. What you have accomplished is flat out amazing. I still owe you that picture of what wheel pipe is, ha
 
I don't mean to tell you how to raise your child, but that good lookin' baby deserves a pair of Babiators! The plants are coming along great, I've been following this one. I hope some day to be able to have a grow of this magnitude. Thanks for the thread, I've really enjoyed it, and congratulations on the new child.
 
Since this is not the first large-scale project for you, but you are now in a new location, I was curious to know what your plan is for harvesting, and drying?
 
I'm Loving the thread. Keep up the good work.... when I move back to Wisconsin I hope to give you some friendly competition errr I mean pick your brain... lol
 
@ William - "they" say that it takes 1 inexperienced man-hour to harvest 1 established plant. These are first years... so I'm hoping a bit less. I intend to sucker, beg, and plead friends and family to come harvest. The top cables drop to simplify collecting the bine. I'll likely throw up one of those collapsible canopies with some folding tables for the crew to pick and pop onto containers. I'll set up a simple screen based oast with 2x4s or something for drying prior to vacuum packaging.
 
Filled tanks and irrigated tonight as we got screwed out of rain, again. A little sensory testing tells me the cones are a ways off from being ready for harvest. Which is, obviously, a relief as I haven't got the oast finished yet and several other projects demand my immediate attention.

One glaring oversight became clear to me this morning. My casual following of other people's oast builds had me slap together the boxes, as you see them, without thinking. This made the OD 25.5", give or take. This was a problem since my screen is 48" and I meant to lay the boxes side by side, staple the screen down , and cut. Well, the ID is 22ish, so I cut the roll of screen in half with the abrasive chop saw at work. More 2x4s were purchased and I began cutting them tonight. Still scratching my head on best fan type and placement

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A box fan works great for me. I place mine at the bottom of the past and blow up. You could place one at the bottom and one at the top both blowing in the same direction, that way the air is forced through all layers of the hops.

My oast build is here.
 
Put the oast on Castors. It makes transportation way easier!

Looks awesome! Great work!
 
I like that idea, gives a solution for air flow through (or under in this case) the bottom box
 
tjpfeister said:
I like that idea, gives a solution for air flow through (or under in this case) the bottom box
Click to expand...

I found my oast is bulky and cumbersome to move. It isn't super heavy, but it is rather large. The Castors make it easy to transfer from storage to use, and provides airflow to the hops from underneath (if you blow air up through the hopbeds) or airflow out (if you are blowing air down through the hopbeds). The ease of movement makes the biggest difference for me, but the added benefit of airflow is also great.

Keep those pictures coming. Your progress through the year has been inspired. Great work!
 
Agreed. Looking forward to your successful harvest (and my own much smaller one), and hearing what ammounts your hard work garnered you!
 
Babies, high school football, and wedding anniversaries have kept me away from the hopyard all week. Thank god we have been getting some rain! I finally did some sampling last night. Picked two random cones from each plant and weighed them wet, dehydrated overnight, then weighed again. They are basically ready for harvest now, but will have to wait til next Saturday when I can assemble a crew.

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Harvest was today... failed at it. Lol, that is to say that we failed to complete it. Tomorrow is another day... But today, today went well. I gathered equipment and painted up the universal sign for hop harvest.

I hurried out to the field and met my first three helping hands, ready to rock. We got our base camp setup quickly and lowered the top cable of the centennials.

The harvest of the centennials went quickly. There were many "angel wings." I served up a lot of Wisco Disco to my now thirsty crew which peaked around 8 people.

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Around the lunch hour I traded out many friends and replaced them with a handful of family members. We knocked down half of the cascades before serving up lunch. Cascades were numerous and tedious in the plucking (about 30 lbs worth wet). We were all glad to be done with them. At this point it was 400pm and I let my crew go home. The chinooks will have to wait until Sunday.

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We harvested about 45.5 lbs (wet) of hops today. There are probably another 20-30lbs of chinooks still hanging. I loaded up the "oast." Each 2x2 screen was loaded with 1Kg of a particular type, this took up 21 screens. That leaves me 5 empties where I probably need more like 12, I'll deal with this tomorrow.

A log book was made so that I could monitor moisture content and record final weights of each type. I was worried about, but pleasantly pleased to find that the fans had no problem pushing air down through each column. The temps are coming back up this week, I hope that the humidity does not! Number crunching suggests that I might have around 15 lbs of dried product

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What agreat way to bring together family and friends! It's probably too early to think about, but when you get a chance to stop and rest, I would be curious to know if this ammount meets/exceeds your expectations? Also, what was your favorite/least favorite part of the whole process?
Congratulations on a harvest! :)
 
@william
I had minimal expectations given the first year status of most the plants, so the answer is "exceeds." But it's giving me a good idea of what to expect next year.

Which process are we discussing? Harvest? I guess my least favorite part is roping volunteers, keeping them motivated, and keeping the teenager from filling my bins with stems, leaves, and broken cones despite repeatedly telling and showing him the proper way to pick.

My favorite part? Well the top cables on winches made smooth work harvesting the bines. But my fav-favorite part is probably fielding the line of questions from now very curious help who want to know why some cones have angel wings and why this one plant started growing boy parts.
 
tjpfeister said:
...keeping the teenager from filling my bins with stems, leaves, and broken cones despite repeatedly telling and showing him the proper way to pick.
Click to expand...

My 3 year old was able to pick properly after being shown how. She broke one cone, apologized and then said she wanted to bury it because it was "dead."

Harvest looked great. I hope the oast lives up to expectations. I was able to get to 5:1 weight in 2 full days on about 9 lbs of cones. Do you have your fans on full or on low? Are you rotating boxes ever few hours to get even contact time with the fan?
 
Running the oast outside, I didn't think about the bugs it would suck up. Luckily, last night I had empty trays on top which caught the critters. So I added some scrap screen to prevent that tonight.

I also had to build 8 more trays... ugh. Besides MORE work, the 2x4s available for purchase were all pretty crummy, so problems compounded. Trying to push through 17 trays is tough enough for the fans, but the new crooked trays let air escape. Frustrating. Very little air can be felt at the bottom of the stacks now- I'll be building (read: $pending) another fan unit to run three stacks tomorrow night

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Great Tutorial and Adventure. From 1st year plants, it sounds like you will need a bigger crew next year.
 
So, frustration ensues. I've been drying the centennial and cascade for 4 days now and the chinook for 3, I am still at 30% moisture across the board. I identified the problem immediately last night when there was no longer stratification through the oast stacks: humidity.

The temps have been in the high eighties but the the dew point has been in the 70s, it's muggy and the hops are approaching a limit. Worse than that, they didn't dry last night. It's so foggy and dew laden at night that when I reweighed a tray this morning, not one gram different after 12 hours of fans pushing fog over them. GRRRR.

I don't know what exact degradation I am causing with the extended drying time, but I'm trying to stay calm about it.

Once the temps came back up, they dropped another 9%. I ran some through the dehydrator and another bunch through the microwave that confirmed my other numbers that I'm still around 30% and thus not ready to package.

In a last ditch effort to accomplish something during the 12 hour over night period, I moved the oast stacks into the garage and rigged up a room AC unit I'm a window to cut the humidity.

I briefly entertained notions of convincing SWMBO to let me bring the stacks indoors, but then I found that either 90F or 30% moisture is deadly to aphids because, surprise! (See picture below). Turns out that if you didn't see aphids all season, they are probably still there. That pile of stuff on the ground ain't lupilin. I'm just glad the little fuggers fit through the mesh when they tumble to their death.
 

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