I am a sucker for a story about hops where the headline begins with “Thank a farmer.”
Growing hops in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, about 20 miles northwest of Louisville, Kentucky, is not something people intent on getting rich quick are likely to do. There was a learning curve in starting Knob View Hops:
“Tim (Byrne, one of two partners) said he initially used some steel to make a makeshift trellis about 10 feet tall, thinking that would be sufficient for the plants. However, hop plants can grow about 20 feet high.
“So about three, four weeks into the growing season, they were over the top of it, and we still had a long time to go, so we welded on to it to make it taller, and these plants just grew like crazy.”
To their credit, they bought a picking machine even though they have a modest 590 plants. That’s few enough you could give them all names. The average farm in the Northwest harvests about 750,000 plants. Knob Views Hops plants are pictured at the top, and plants on a typical farm in the Yakima Valley on the bottom.
Anyway, I really hope that Knob View Hops gets its online store up and running so I can order a t-shirt.