A “Young” Old Curmudgeon Trains His Bines

At age 44 (I often need to recalculate that tracking back to 1971 as I literally forget my age exactly!), I feel pretty chipper for a fella approaching middle age. The combination of trail running and Farming seems to mostly do the trick, however I’d love to work Yoga and more cycling back into that routine.

I’m not sure what I was thinking in the photo below, but “Young Old Curmudgeon” just seemed to fit 😉

As we head towards the official start of Summer, temperatures are warming up and the hops are loving it! The time had come to get the bines trained to their coir and it all went pretty well. I’m a tad nervous as I’m using last years’ as I don’t have a ladder tall enough to take down the old ones and put up new coir. Also with a tight (read “non existent”) budget, I’m not paying $50/hour to rent the bucket truck again. “We shall see what we shall see!” I’m sure it’ll be fine. Someday a tractor with a bucket or a retrofitted hay wagon with elevated stand will do the trick.

I also added a lower line for the drip irrigation to be suspended from. I’d read about a number of hopyards using this technique to make weeding easier since you’re not having to mess with weeding around the drip tape that’s at the base of the bines. We’ll see how it goes…I’m not digging how much sag I’m getting in the line so I’m guessing I’ll need to replace that lower rope with actual cable.

Overall the yard’s looking like it’s off to a great second year start!