"When Hops met Grape"

Rolf and Heleen of Fort Berens Winery asked us if we wanted to turn and wine festival into a wine and beer festival. We said yes. If you find yourself in Lillooet this coming weekend, be sure take in the First Annual Lillooet Beer and Wine Festival on September 19th!

2000 strings of coir on the trellis, 2000 strings of coir...

I don't want to be that blogger who always apologizes when a few months have past since publishing their last post - so I won't.

Let's get down to business. My inspiration tonight happens to be a fine bottle of Farmhand Ale by Driftwood Brewery out of Victoria, BC. We have yet to strike a deal with the folks over at Driftwood re: hops sales, but we think they are the forward-thinking chaps who would entertain such a transaction. Lord knows, there will be enough hops to go 'round this harvest season. Rewind...
It was the first weekend in May when the potted plants went into the ground (that post) and by the third week in May, many of the bines needed to be trained.

Onto what you ask? Well, my friend that is the subject of this week's blog!

Coir - we purchased two bales of the coconut stuff from a distributor based out of Washington. Approximately 5000 strings fit into the bulky shipment, whose origins can be sourced back to Sri Lanka. Coir twine is one of many useful products made from the byproducts of the coconut industry. Lucky for us, this fibre is cheap, strong, and organic. It will break down in the compost along with the waste hop material after harvest.

The bales are neatly bundled together in 100 string bundles, each of which measures 20'6" - enough extra length for knotting the strings atop out 18' trellis and anchoring them into the ground.

I grabbed a few strings and hiked myself up to the top of the orchard ladder to figure out how they should be tied to the trellis. I'm confident there is a knot out there already invented for just such a task, but I'm not aware of it. Instead, this is the one I devised:

When the knot is cinched, it holds in place and doesn't slide along the wire.

Now that the knot was figured out, I realized that walking up the ladder with a handful of coir and tying three or four at a time before having to move the ladder was not an efficient use of my time. Where's Hal? He will have a solution for our little predicament. Our neighbour Hal is always thinking. And while I was screwing around with the ladder and making next to no progress, Hal was thinking, "Why don't those boys move the ladder with their brand new tractor?". And so it was done.

Ratchet straps holds the ladder section cradled in the bucket and a rock box keeps the tripod in place towards the rear of the tractor - brilliant.

When we load up 100 strings to the top of the ladder, tying strings is fast and efficient. Although, this worked well for us in 2010, we have an even more skookum  method devised to make stringing even faster - with two people tying at one time. We'll save that for 2011.

Faith and Uncertainty in Hops Farming

I came across this video that was taken at the Rising Sun Farms of Colorado, one of only a handful of hop farms in the United States growing organically. A late spring hail storm caused serious damage to this 9-10 acre hopyard.



 This video is heartbreaking to watch, particularly to the fellow hop grower. As noted in the video, most of the tender hop shoots were broken from the hail storm, which is likely to stunt the growth of the entire hopyard. One of the comments on the video came from another experienced grower who mentions new shoots will develop just below where it was damaged and continue to grow upwards. True - but such damage is likely to reduce yields significantly, not to mention the additional labour required for retraining the bines.

At our hopyard, we notice that hop plants respond to broken shoots by initiating secondary shoots along the entire bine. Unless these shoots are pruned, dozens will develop simultaneously, creating a bushy like appearance below the point of damage.

From the plant's perspective, this makes sense. As a survival strategy, an explosion of new shoots ensures at least a few bines latch on to the climbing substrate to continue their vertical trajectory. From the perspective of the farmer, this is simply unnecessary vegetative growth and an inefficient use of available nitrogen.  The solution, as we have discovered, is to prune all other side shoots except for ONE just below where the damage occurred. The plant then concentrates its energy into developing this single shoot. This should be done as soon as possible to encourage this single shoot and discourage continued growth of other side shoots.

In any unavoidable disaster such as the one at Rising Sun Farms, its always a good idea to have a few cold ones in the fridge to lessen the blow. Best of luck to those growers in Colorado!

Hopateers

April was coming to a close and our seven hundred and fifty-nine hops needed to be planted.  I also needed to celebrate my 30th birthday. Light bulb moment. Plan a planting party for the first weekend in May with everyone I know. What an idea! Don't bring gifts just bring your enthousiasm for digging holes! This could have been a tough sell but fortunately I convinced 18 friends from Vancouver who made the trek over the Duffy or through the Fraser Canyon, while pushing through high elevation snow flurries and avoiding unexpected roadside ungulates, respectively. Include the brothers et al from Whistler (5) and a peppering of our limited local contacts (4) and we had a serious party on our hands!
After distributing a few dozen cups of coffee around and rousing a few stragglers from their tents, we began prepping the field. This turned out to be a larger task than we we thought. Fifteen rows needed to be tilled up, cleared of surface rocks, 150 tractor buckets of compost needed to be spread, and of course, the planting.
Hal worked the Woods rototiller in a not-so-traditional fashion by working one 5' section at a time across the field. A dedicated Heather assisted Hal in keeping within the planned rows.

With the soil loosened, myself and a few well-trained tractor operators started depleting our massive compost pile one bucket load at a time. At this point, the compost had been breaking down for just two months and microbial activity had slowed producing a fine organic blend ready to add to the hop yard.

Once the compost was dumped, the crew put their backs into it to have it evenly spread along the rows. A farm can never have too many shovels.

By mid-day there was considerable progress on the field prep. Although we roughed up the green manure a bit, the the young oats and vetch continued to grow throughout May (more to come on the green manure).

The storm clouds started to develop by mid-afternoon and it appeared as though my sunny weekend guarantee was going to backfire in my face. Backfire with hail, to be specific. The change in weather was marked by a strong wind gusts twisting around the confluence of the Cayoosh and Fraser Rivers.

Workers rested on their shovels to witness the change in atmospheric energy and contemplated returning to the shack to change into more weather-proof apparel. This was a good idea, as a rain shower turned into hail and back to rain. Despite the terrible conditions, there was a cheery mood in the air with the crew donning their uniquely-coloured rain jackets!

By this time, we were ready to get the plants into the ground. What better tool to use than the classic maddock?

We spaced the holes 3.5' apart and filled them with organic amendments including bone meal, kelp meal, canola meal, and ash collected from burned ponderosa pines from around the property.

 This is where the real assembly line work began and prompted a few to provide refreshments and nourishment to the rest. Bottled home brew made with last year's hops and Pilsbury's cookies to be precise.

Productivity did eventually slow to a stand still but only after the entire acre was prepped and about 300 hops were planted into the ground. Job well done! Silliness ensued...

Composting 101

Part science, part cooking class, composting is central to any organic farming operation - especially a farm like ours whose soils have no history of cultivation. Recent soil tests confirmed that we had only a modest organic content (2.5%) so composting would be the quickest way to supplement existing organic matter and support the young hop plants. After some quick calculations, we realized that we needed A LOT of compost to cover the 15 rows of the one acre hopyard.  So, where to start? As it turns out, it's not that complicated. However, there are a number of factors that will influence the rate at which your raw material will break down. The most important consideration is obtaining an optimal Carbon:Nitrogen ratio. There are a number of compost calculators online to help you estimate this ratio using a suite of raw materials.

http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/fileshtml/organics/compostcalc.htm

We opted for simplicity on our first attempt with alfalfa hay (carbon source) and horse manure (nitrogen source) as the sole ingredients. We sourced the hay from Texas Creek Ranch and have to thank Ekhard for graciously donating some old, broken down bails and the manure came from our neighbour who boards horses and had accumulated quite a bit over the winter.

Like making the world's largest lasagna, we spread thin layers of hay with scoops of manure, trying to water the layers along the way until we ran out of ingredients. Oh, I forgot to mention that Tim collected a dozen garbage bags of oak leaves he stole from a local Vancouver park near his house - he seemed to think the mold on the leaves would inoculate the pile to initiate the composting process. After covering the massive pile with tarps, we let microbiology take over.

After the first week, we discovered some surprises underneath the tarp...

Aside from being knee deep in animal excrement, my favourite part of the composting process is the stirring. For those of you who know me, this is also why I can't make rice but CAN make a mean stir fry.
Compost piles of such epic proportions, require mixing tongs of the hydraulic variety so when we were installing the poles, we took a moment to have Jason stir the stinking pile.

Of course, we recorded the temperature of the pile periodically over the 5 week period to ensure that weed seed would not germinate, kill pathogens, and to comply with the standards with certified organic protocols.

Temps after the first week. Looks like we need a thermometer a higher scale...temps regularly reached above 135 F in subsequent weeks.

Trellis Triumphant

So much has happened in the last few months at the farm I don't know where to start! Spring has sprung forward like a jack-in-the-box and all of a sudden we find ourselves tending to second year hops planted under an almost-finished one-acre trellis! How did that happen!?

Let's take a few steps back:

We tried to install all the trellis poles last fall but an early winter caused us to rethink our schedule. So as soon as the ground thawed the first week of March, we were eager to complete the 88-pole trellis. We called up Jason and he was quick to return, this time with a Deere 50C excavator. Not too big not too small, this machine proved to be far more effective than a power auger. There's just no way an auger would be able to penetrate the aggregate rock we discovered at depths of about 3' and sometimes shallower.

Working quickly, we were able to sink one pole every 5-10 minutes. With the interior poles complete, we could now even out the lumps and bumps of the hop yard. Our budget solution was to drag a grader blade up, down, and across the rows from behind our F150. The blade was fixed to an old towing V and chained to the the truck hitch and we were off to the races in fine 'Chariots of Fire' style.

In my next post, I'll fill you in on all things compost...

Tim in the F150 discovering a wee dip in the terrain with Jason quick to the rescue!

A Monday Morning Hike

With no pressing duties on the farm, it was finally time to go and explore our Majesty's hinterland. Just a few steps out the door and I was already on Crown Land rapidly climbing in elevation towards a destination I have been wanting to climb for over a year - Fountain Ridge.

This ridge is more entertaining than NBC's Thursday night Must See TV. Seriously, I would prefer to watch the ridge for half an hour than an episode of 30 Rock any day! There's just so much going on up there. For starters, its a magnet for raptors. Ravens use the steep precipice a place of worship, congregating there at sundown on random summer evenings. At least two pairs of red-tailed hawks have hooked up and are nesting on its slopes. Bald Eagles are often seen harassing these Red-tails for no good reason. Did I mention Golden Eagles, the Schwarzenegger of raptors!? Yup, there is one hanging out here, too. And at night, Great-horned and Barred Owls can be heard hooting their familiar calls half way up the slope.

Fountain Ridge has been tempting me for over a year. While taking a break to stretch my back or take a breather from the monotonous tasks of a hopyard, I often look up at the ridge and think, "I need to get up there". Well, I finally did. With just a backpack, a few granola bars, water, binoculars, camera, and cell phone (its GPS allows me to see my current position on Google maps - very cool) I managed to reach the top in 2.5 hours with plenty of stops. Its amazing what 2000 vertical feet will do to a view! My first impression was: Lillooet looks infinitely more cool from up here. I was also able to get a bird's eye view of our hop farm and scout out where we could put in the next few acres of hops.

Despite the brilliant February sun, it didn't take too long before a chill came over me. So after taking a quick call from my sister and answering a few emails on my new smartphone (just for novelty sake), I headed back down. My descent was expedited with the help of a massive scree slope extending from the ridge top. I tried to imagine the scree was Whistler powder and my boot soles had skis attached to them and slid to its base in a mere 20 minutes. That was fun!

Fighting fire with fire

It's the dead of winter here at the farm but images of blazing wildfires from the previous summer are still fresh in our minds.

Luckily, our farm is situated on the east side of the Fraser River which provided a buffer of safety from the infamous infernos that made Lillooet a household name during the summer of 2009. However, we realized this was a relatively fragile buffer after witnessing charred pieces of woody debris falling from the sky onto our property.

Smoke plumes from the wildfire were ejecting this debris thousands of feet into the sky only to fall back to the earth many kilometres away. If only one still contained embers, it could initiate a new fire wherever it fell.

This got us thinking about how to better protect our property from future blazes. After all, the pine beetle had ravaged most of our ponderosa pines, leaving hundreds dead like giant matchsticks just waiting for a spark.

So in mid-January with a nice layer of snow on the ground, we set forth into the nearby Ponderosa patch with our new favourite farm gadget, the Stihl Farm Hand chainsaw to 'reduce the fuel load'.

The blue stain of the wood is indicative of a pine beetle infestation and is created not by the pine beetle but a fungus carried in its mouth parts. When the beetle bores into the wood, the fungus spreads throughout the tree constricting the flow of water and nutrients which eventually contributes to the death of the plant!

We then set ablaze a number of large piles of debris from the fallen trees. This one was especially impressive!

The resultant ash from these fires will be scattered to other areas of the property to encourage establishment and growth of native deciduous vegetation to attract wildlife and migratory songbirds, in particular. The foliage of showberry, maple, dogwood, and rose provides opportunities to glean for insects as well as cover during breeding and migration.

The Big Freeze & The Big Bad Trellis

Here at Bitterbine Farm/Ranch (we haven't quite figured out which description best describes our 18 acres...) we bring in the New Year with a half-finished trellis for the one-acre hop yard. There has been a Herculean effort by friends and family during the fall to get us to this stage. The majority of their sweat was poured into making the 88 hand-made cedar poles - the cellulose bones of the trellis system.

After getting a much-needed tutorial from our neighbour Hal on the ins-and-outs of working with such massive raw timber, we pulled out or brand new Stihl Farmhand Chainsaw and started cutting the cedar timber to size.

We found it fitting that much or our Lumberjack work occurred during the month of Movember while Tim and I were sporting our magnificent moustaches, which brought in hundreds of dollars for Prostate Cancer research!

Each pole was measured to 21': 18' out of and 3' into the ground. The final product was just the right size for one person to maneuver with only partial back strain. We split the poles to have substantial girth (a few additional inches than what is recommended) to withstand Lillooet's infamous wind gusts that shoot through the Fraser Valley during the hot summer months.

We're also putting our faith in the natural strength of Thuja plicata to flex and not break in the face of gusts exceeding 80 km/hr. We were given a taste of what's to come on the night of November 30th after putting up a dozen poles: Strong winds and torrential rain fell that night, forcing over poles that were only partially back-filled.

With the pole yard count reaching the magic 88, we set our sights on getting them into the ground before freeze-up. With the help of Hal and his hard working Deere, we managed to install the perimeter poles to the yard by the end of Movember. But with forecasts calling for some serious sub-zero nights for the first week of December, we had precious little time to get the rest of the poles in before the ground became like hardened concrete. Turns out Mother Nature gave us one last day - December 1st - to install the remaining 50 interior poles. Good luck, we thought. Nevertheless, we added a powerful skid steer to the equation and managed to push through the encrusted piles of soil to infill about a dozen more poles.

By about 2:30 pm, we looked at our progress and Garrett the skid steer operator said, "Boys, winter will be here in about 20 minutes." He was right, the sun was heading back behind the mountains and a rapid chill could be felt in the air. Although the unfinished trellis was a little disappointing, we figured to just pick-up where we left off come spring time.

In the mean time, let's make some hoppy beer!