Hop Picking

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This year we joined the Deal Hop Farm.  Deal is one of our nearest local towns.  In more than 300 sites in and around Deal, people grow hops in their gardens, balconies, allotments, etc.  We got two hop rhizomes and twine from the friendly, helpful people who organise the hop farm.

At home on the edge of our new orchard Greg put in some poles and over several months the hops grew up the twine.  As it's our first year we didn't expect a lot of growth, however we were pleasantly surprised - and that was after the initial shoots were chewed off in the spring.


 These first two photos are from August.


 

In September we harvested our hops, along with everyone else involved in the Deal Hop Farm.  We all brought our hops to the Captain's Garden (Deal's community garden) where they were weighed, put into big sacks and sent off to local breweries.

We were proud of our little bag of hops, even if some people had massive sacks of hops. 😊


It was great working with the others taking the hops off the vines and listening to the scratch band.

 

The green hop beer was ready in a matter of a few weeks.

dealhopfarm.org.uk

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