A Certified Naturally Grown Farm - Saint Marys, Pennsylvania
Hopyard Comin’ On Strong
At the official start of Summer, we find the hopyard doing pretty well. The bines of both our Cascade and Nugget varieties are making their way up the coir, some are almost at the top of the 20′ trellis! Each week, we weed the…
PSU Specialty Grains Field Day
Time to take a little break from the hops, and get a little “edumacation” on a new endeavor we’re just starting to explore – malting barley. We can thank our good friend, Adam Seitz of Penns Mault…yup, the very same fella who talked us…
The New Black Locust Poles Have Arrived
Yeeeehaw! Finally feels like our new hopyard is finally under way. A few days ago, our freshly cut black locust poles were delivered via the awesome folks at St. Marys Lumber. They arrived after being transported from Irvona, PA which is near Altoona. Black…
Frost Warning! “I love where I Farm…I love where I Farm…” Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!!
Ok, that’s a bit dramatic 😉 While it is a bit later than usual, it’s totally NOT unheard of to have a frost warning this early in the season. However that being said, it still wasn’t what I wanted to hear when I listened…
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…
A Little Scythe Action!
It’s now early May and the hops are shooting up like crazy! They’ll need to be trimmed and trained to their coir very soon. We find the 4 healthiest arms and train those to become a bine…the others are trimmed off so that the…
Cleaning Up The High Tunnel
The snows have finally melted and the hopyard has emerged! Today was some tidying up of the beds…weeding, trimming, etc…but more importantly moving and stacking sections of our former high tunnel that collapsed almost 3 years ago due to an early January ice storm….
Early Season Trailrunning
The last weekend of March and early April can typically be a crapshoot as far as weather in our neck of the woods. “Am I Winter…should I be Spring…no, I think I’ll stay Winter!” Fuhgeddaboudit!! On March 28, I had a few hours on my…
Winter Fields, Ridgway Chainsaw Rendezvous
The snow is insulating everything…the hopyard, the upper fields…the sound. I threw on the snowshoes and headed up to the hopyard, and where our high tunnel use to stand. It is now a pile of scrap metal waiting to be hauled off for recycling….
