Our Farm Brewery Baby

Thankfully, the hops training got done before Baby Toby arrived! He was born on Sunday, May 31st. Our hearts are fuller and our lives busier than ever before. 

Hops wait for no baby!

Since the birth of our son, we've all been playing catch up in the hop yard. Our plants' growth in their second year in the big yard is hugely outpacing their first year growth. Pruning and stripping the bottom leaves are a major priority right now. An urgent priority! Saul and Fran have been working overtime and making headway. Last weekend, we enlisted the help of some of our most earnest Griffin Hill supporters and make a party of it. Baby's first party, in fact! The late afternoon rain may have cut our work day a bit short but it didn't interfere with reveling in our late spring homemade pizza/beer/Toby-snuggling fest. 

The yard is shaping up and we are expecting quite a harvest this year. I'm already dreaming about the beer we'll make. Now that Toby is born, I'm looking forward to imbibing this year's harvest in the glass! 

Sunday in the Hopyard

Such fun to snap some pics on a sunny Sunday! Saul and Fran finished up the training while I waddled the yard. 

Willamette twins

Locust post and bine  

Rakau, our hop beast 

Spring Training

There is a whole lot of training on the hill these days! First and foremost, the hops. Training is the process of selecting several hop shoots and manually wrapping them around the coir (coconut twine). Like so much with hop growing- and brewing- it is part art and part science. 

Liberty shoot on coir

With 2 coir per plant, average 3 shoots per coir, and about 400 plants, we are lovingly (most of the time) hand-training around 2400 shoots in our half-acre hop yard this spring. 

What other kind of training is keeping us busy? Training for parenthood! Saul and I are expecting a baby boy any day now. It's a race to which will happen first... the end of hop training or the arrival of our baby!

Albert relaxing in the Ultras