Oh, and did I mention that it has been raining. We have been making a push to get the new rhizomes in the ground and to get the barley field ready and planted. It literally seems like we get a storm system coming through every evening. I'll refrain from discussing my opinions on the issue of human induced climate change, but will note the inconvenience of having 35 degree temperature swings every few days. I've recently started viewing warm spring days as the low density air mass they are, soon to be followed by the heavy dense cold front running to catch up, like the proverbial bull in a china shop. We are certainly glad to have a basement here on Windy Hill. No, those aren't lily pads in the photo, it is our clover cover crop that final started growing, I mean swimming.Did I mention that we have had a lot of rain. I am really glad that we pushed to get the plowing done a few weeks ago when we had dry weather. It looks like we might be weeks before we get a real dry spell. Jen has worked really hard on getting the hops in, mostly on her own. This time of year is really busy with my real profession. We have spent quite a few evenings in the hop yard until we couldn't see anymore. We are expanding from the 120 plants of last year to a total of 220 with additional varieties such that we will have production from cascade, willamette, nugget, and chinook. Also on the fermentable front we put in about 1/3 acre of 2-row barley. Depending on the sources of information, malting barley will either do fine here, or it won't grow.
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