Work Day 3

Saturday morning , raining, windy , cold, crappy day, after the most unbelievable spring day Friday with temps in the 70's Friday.

Oh well, we have holes to dig and poles to raise.

The fair weather hopsters did not leave their armchairs , so just Steve , Jason and I cut the poles to length, 25 ft each, and as the rain had hardly broken, the ground was just too wet to do anything else. Jonathan later tried moving the poles with the forklift and got it stuck in the mud. William arrived as we were toasting a job well done. Seems like those who stayed at home were right !!!:-0

My postman Fred did deliver the second batch of Rhizomes 30 minutes after everyone left, so
(Pics still have 2007 - guess I need to fix that)

Sunday morning in the rain I potted them up. These came from More Beer and were not as good quality as we had from Alt Beverage.

In fact one twig (second from left)was not a Rhizome at all..... no sign of any shoots and broken in the middle on top of that, the other three were fine, but these were the Cascades dammit !!!! ( edit: More Beer agreed with my Picture and credited me for that one which they said should not have made it past Quality Control- Thanks Robin !!!)

....but they were all dusted with rooting hormone and potted and nestled into the heated greenhouse.

The Nugget and Sterling are all doing very well, with lots of green shoots sticking up, Marigold seedlings have over 60% out as well.


I got a shipping notification, so I am expecting the last rhizome shipment to arrive on Wednesday this week. Dan has the 5x Chinooks as well.

We have 14 days to complete the work and get them planted, so will have to put some after work hours in soon.

Till next week..

2nd Work Party a success

March 22nd , a big party turned out to work on the project.
Mac , Steve, Dick, Don, Sam, Eric , William and Dan all arrived willing to work.

Friday night I moved 10 backhoe bucket loads of rotted mulch to the hops area from the far side of the property, in preparation of mixing it into the soil, I also started to plow up the long row using the backhoe rear bucket. The whole area was also mowed with one exception, circle D, as it had too many sticks in it still (it was where the old tree fell ) . I chose an old push mower from the pile on the property (there are over 20 old scrap mowers back there) to work on and got it running pretty quickly and it will be our mower for use on the project. It was a drive type and the drive gear box had seized, so I just dismantled the gearbox, the motor ran fine.

A beautiful day greeted us Saturday and a long list of items to be done. We had to mow the last circle after picking up the sticks- with our new project mower, we had all the horse manure , compost and mulch to add to the existing circles and the long row. We had to till it all and then mound it all up again. Poles were supposed to be chosen and dug in, but our Landowner struggled to get equipment to us, but we still had plenty to keep us busy. The small tractor would not start, and then the Backhoe blew out a hydraulic hose and had to be sidelined. We eventually got the large excavator working, and small tractor with tines and scraping blade working to help with the work. The final outcome is 4 crop circles, and a 120 ft line all mounded and ready for planting.....



We rolled out some cable for the full length, but Jonathan wants us to rather use a smaller diameter and also a cable that is not quite as new as the one I found. We also tackled cutting the brambles and area between the trees and the road, and we will try and keep it clean too.

At the end of the day after most had left, Jonathan and I managed with Eric and William to pick out 8x 25ft (and longer) poles and set them aside for next time. These will be raised after the auger holes are dug- at least 4-5ft, and then all will be topped to the same height for uniformity.

A soil test was done Sunday and except for Nitrogen all looks fine- amazingly the PH was almost neutral , which is perfect , will put a bit of nitrogen rich fertilizer down and recheck in a week. Maybe we do need some more horse manure for the circles ???



Our potted hops, have started to sprout, with the first two shoots out the soil, the first tray of Marigolds also have sprouted



The first Hop shoots

2008 Shamrock Open

Saturday was the first homebrew competition of the 2008 season.

This was the Shamrock Open, held in Raleigh NC by the CARBOY homebrew club http://hbd.org/carboy/

They attracted 424 beers, and our club The Battleground Brewers Guild sent a group of Judges , Stewards and helpers to help them out.

The BBG showed extremely well with 9 of our members taking awards. Full results are posted here : Shamrock 2008 Results

My own haul was great, I had 5 beers entered and all 5 won ribbons, with my Springbok Traditional Bock in Category 5B winning a gold. Overall two thirds, two seconds and a first.

Springbok was brewed from an old Randy Mosher recipe that I tweaked and played with, having brewed it now 3 times. Beer has been lagering for 3 months and will be served at the BBG's March Bockfest on March 19th.

St Patrick's day was celebrated with two Guinness pints at McCoul's downtown Irish pub, with dancing girls, bagpipes and far too many drunk Leprechauns , sadly kid taxi was in force and I had to leave at 5:15pm.

Oh well , at least the 18th was started with a clear head.

The First of the Hops arrive

Monday morning Mr Brown - UPS delivered the first of the parcels with Hops in them. 16 rhizomes in all, in two scrawny plastic packets.

8 each of Sterling - the thin ones to right, and 8x Nugget (the bigger ones in the pic below)

In fact the ones that arrived were the last ordered, from Alt Beverage in Charlotte - way to go Jess and team....

To ensure freshness, they were potted up in 5" peat pots and put into the greenhouse awaiting Saturday for planting. I also experimented with some of the roots Tony dug up from his Nugget bines, by using some rooting Hormone , I also potted up 4 that looked promising. These are clearly marked to see what we get out.

During last week Mark delivered more compost, and Jason arrived with the horse Manure as well.

Plans for this weekend , are :
Add more compost, add well rotted mulch and turn the soil, then to mound up the areas, ready for planting.

Planting poles in both maypole area and the long row, and erecting wires for the long row.


Preparing the water tank for filling, this requires welding up the stand, and getting piping for filling from the well point. Adding in the water pump if we chose to go ahead with using it, and lastly planning out the actual water pipes.

BBG Hops project update

A very busy early spring season for me.

Samiclaus is in Fermenter, almost 3 weeks and still an occasional bubble.... time to rack to secondary.

On Tap : SN clone Pale ale
Chocolate Stout
OH MY Oatmeal Stout
Springbok Bock
Kolsch (from last summer)- still tastes great
Helles

Brew plans are for an easy drinking ale this week and another Lager - probably Munich Dunkel next week.

Hops project is off to a great start, 8 members turned out to help get the ground ready, first maypole areas are tilled and compost turned into the soil















Guys worked hard despite the crummy weather