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Finished the harvest today. Chinook were easy to pick, collected 31.8lbs in 3 hours with a small crew, putting the total harvest at 77.3lbs

@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...

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...

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...

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...

I don't know how you would do it with them still wet. I've got some dry ones on my Oktoberfest hat that I have been considering lacquer dipping to make them more durable.

Well, dammit. Those are all hosted on Facepage. I'll try to sort it out later. In the meantime, here's a nice article written about my field: http://oshkoshbeer.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-season-at-tim-pfeisters-hop-yard.html?m=1

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...

I like that idea, gives a solution for air flow through (or under in this case) the bottom box

Working on completing the oast tonight. Final shot is of my father in the yard last night as the oncoming storm blew the chinooks around. The oast will actually be two separate stacks once I figure out how to mount the box fans

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...

Harvest could be any week, or any day now. Probably weeks, let's hope it's a few weeks. Crazy busy lately, the 9yo and I found a little time to start on the hop oast. Wish I had an idea how many 2x2 trays I will need. Guess I'll start with 22 of them and see what happens

Ground contact treated 4x4s, 20' long go for $30 each in my neck of the woods

@ 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...

Cones are getting big. Lost a few bines to chaffing in the wind on the lower cable. Fighting draught, keeping those irrigators full is a chore.

Have cones forming on all three varieties; chinook, cascade, and centennial respectively. Watering daily as the rain keeps going to Minnesota and Illinois. The upside is that has allowed for copious amounts of weeding.

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...

Been dry lately, have to run the irrigation nightly. Tonight's count is 16 plants at or over the top wire. Centennial are still weaksauce, but might see a nice little harvest off cascade this season; possibly Chinook.

Some images from around the yard these past few days: 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: Considering have some t-shirts made up: And I've got to get going to work, so I don't have time to make...

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...