“A Little Off The Top…Er, Bottom…Please!”

Returning to the Farm after a week away, I just never know quite what to expect. Weeds out of control? Something break? Japanese beetles show up weeks early? “Expect the worst, it can only get better” is pretty much the motto we follow.

I was pleasantly surprised things weren’t completely out of control. I knew to expect a fair amount of new weeds and hop bines that needed trimmed back thanks to the trail cam we have pointed at the small hopyard. Overall, things didn’t appear to be overwhelming.

First order of the day was to spray the organic fungicide as we (and the entire Mid-Atlantic) has been living in prime downy mildew weather. Now, the last 3 weeks off and on, I’d been working on rebuilding the Hypro pump that is the guts of our Woods sprayer. That sprayer is much more efficient for spraying than the smaller Fimco. Don’t get me wrong, the Fimco works great in the early part of the season up to now, but once the hops are full height and dense with all the leaves, sidearms, and cones, it’s terribly time consuming using that particular sprayer.

As I was rushing to get things sprayed so I could move on to the next of 30-ish to-do’s for the weekend, I thought to myself “You know what…just use the small sprayer one last time and you can reassemble the big sprayer at the end of the day”. So I get 1/4 complete and BLAMMO…hose springs a leak on the FIMCO. Thus is uttered the phrase probably used a hundred times over the course of a weekend at the Farm – “You gotta be f***ing kidding me!” No…not kidding.

I’m not certain why I even considered doing it as I knew the outcome, but I gave a duct tape wrap to the hose to see if I could finish the small yard this week and move on to the Woods sprayer next weekend. Down to the barn, grabbed one of 10 duct tape rolls we have, wrap, wrap, wrap…oh and wrap for good measure…fire up the sprayer and…DRIP, DRIP, DRIP! Thus the second instance of the popular Farm phrase and it’s only within the first 30 minutes of the day.

Back down to the barn determined to just suck it up, and finish reassembling the Woods sprayer in the hope the new pistons and spray cups did the trick for this 40+ year old unit. All back together, add enough water to the tank to try it and…same issue as last year when I stopped using it…drastically low pressure. And you guessed it, the third instance of the famed phrase appears with an even most dramatic tone and emphasis.

Ironically at that very moment, I receive a text from the guy I bought the pistons and sprayer cups from, I kid you note, right then and there. He was asking if I’d given the sprayer a try with the new parts in place. After I explained my dilemma, he asked some follow up questions, one being the condition of the filter and the cup it sits in. Now when I’d looked at this cup last year, I could see some small cracks forming but for some reason, didn’t think it would be something that would affect the pressure to the wand, certainly not to the dramatic drop I’d seen from one season to the next.

However sure enough, once I showed the picture to him, and thought about it more myself, I realized this was probably the actual issue, not the pistons or cups. That being said, I’m glad I replaced them as well as I’m certain based on the wear and tear looking at them when I pulled the pump apart, it was long past time to do so. And so, right then and there I order a new cup, filter, and pressure gauge from him as I’m certain that final combination will get the Woods sprayer back in action.

The Woods has almost double the tank capacity, a much more powerful stream that I can adjust the pressure, and a longer hose, and although we don’t need it, it also has a small boom sprayer in the back. Ok, now I needed to find a way to finish the small hopyard with the busted Fimco. I realized I’d have have remove the layers of duct tape I added to cut the hose and splice it, but of course the 30 wraps I did with the tape were beyond difficult to try and remove and now, I really didn’t have extra time. Choice phrase #4.

Looking over at the Woods sprayer, I realized it uses the same diameter hose, so off it comes from the Woods and over to the Fimco. Fire up the Fimco again and HUZZAH, something finally works this morning! Back up to the small hopyard with one of the small ladders in tow to reach the bines that had reached the top of the trellis or were close enough the spray mist wouldn’t reach them. A fifteen minute job became 2 hours.

The next task of the morning was to get busy trimming up the bottom 3′ of the bines, along with simultaneously weeding and removing all the runners that had grown in the last 2 weeks. The benefit of giving “chicken legs” to the hops, particularly in an organic system, is that it increases airflow through the yard which decreases both disease and pest pressure. It also allows the hops to put more energy into developing the sidearms where the cones will soon start forming. We want to encourage and help the hop bines to put the energy where it’s needed most.

Now in the image above, you can see all the debris in the inner and outer alleys. We don’t want them there as it would leave any disease, should there be any, still in the yard. So at the end of the afternoon, I spent time raking all the debris from the hills under the hops and into windrows in the alleys, and then went through with the riding mower were all of it was bagged and deposited far away from the yard. Neat and tidy, just the way we like it!

Earlier in the morning, I walked up to the solar panel and pump to turn it back on. I’d turned it off before leaving the other weekend as the “tank full” sensor had finally failed. Waiting for me when I arrived at the Farm was the wireless tank full transmitter and receiver set we’d ordered. However I wanted to do some more thinking about how they’d be mounted before diving into that project. Running the pump while up for the weekend was more than enough time to fill our 5,000 gallon tank and that’d be more than enough to supply the small hopyard for the week. When the large hopyard is replanted and growing next season, we won’t have that luxury so this fix is definitely needed.

We’d placed a simple counter at the spigot to monitor water usage. Now this was added about 2 weeks into the season after we’d started irrigating, so the 3,300 gallons it showed is probably about 1,000 gallons shy of the actual amount used so far. After turning on the pump, walked up to the tank and with the new clear Bernoulli tube I could see there was still 1,500 gallons. On went the pump and by the time I shut it off the next day, it was near 4,500. It rocks!

Long story short, 2 days at the Farm had its ups and downs, but it always does…that’s Farming. However with new parts on the way, I feel pretty confident we’ll be in a good place for spraying fungicide and insecticide for the remainder of the season, and we’ll have time to propagate hops from cuttings from both the Nuggets and Cascades for planting in a month or so. The large yard still needs to be finished tilling, amendments added, hilling, temporary drip line put in, but by then the small hopyard will be sort of on autopilot.

And just a footnote…the magic phrase was not uttered even once on day 2. #winning