Originally Posted by DanAdair
Sam and Ag geeks.

In all seriousness, I'm toying with the idea of turning 30 acres of what's left of the family farm into a Hop Farm. One of the guys I know at Great Northern says he could just about gaurantee they'd buy all that we could produce. The MSU Ag station here even got grant funding to determine which varieties grow best here and all that BS. Pretty much their findings is this in a nutshell... Hops love the 49th paralell, and west side of the Rocky Mountain Front is as good as it gets. Combined with the Glacial Till topsoil, areas that are in the riverbottoms have almost the ideal soil PH. The only other area in the world that has this same balance of features is Germany. The issue is, I really don't know [bleep] about farm life. How's a guy even go about harvesting hops? Hire mexicans??

Oh, this particular acerage has a 150 GPM irrigation well already drilled. There is no pump house or electric there yet. How much would irrigation increase yield in hops?


Not that you'd have to be organic - but gives an idea.

Also - it takes a few years for hop bines to really take off.



Shows some harvesting

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uhCmCEBGhTE[/video]



Me