A Certified Naturally Grown Farm - Saint Marys, Pennsylvania
Harvest Time Is Just Around The Corner
Well you’ll see by the pictures and video below, that the hops are tall and strong and full of hops cones! I’ll be doing a dry matter test soon to determine just about how “done” they are. We’ll then need an “all hands on…
As With All Things In Life, “Live & Learn!”
Being only our second year as hops Farmers, we learn things…the hard way..quite often. Case in point, our addition of the new irrigation cable in the hopyard. Actually it wasn’t this concept of using an additional raised cable to support our irrigation line that…
Happy, Not-So-Little, Hops!
We continue to spray Actinovate each week to prevent downy mildew from rearing its ugly fungicidal head in our hopyard and it’s working well. Just making totally sure this sprayer never gets used for anything but organically-approved materials. If I can’t backpack with one…
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…
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….
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….
