We’ve talked a lot about farming tools, but what about financial tools?  There are so many efficiencies to be gained from having the right equipment and the most common rationale is “I can’t afford it so I’ll do it by hand”.

If there’s one thing we all know about growing hops it’s that they’ll do what they want, when they want, regardless of what we’re up to.  It’s getting warm out and that means that they are coming out of dormancy.

Mark returns to talk with us about measuring labor requirements, a topic that we’ve been focusing on a lot lately.  We also get into balancing a day job with a hop farm and identifying the secondary hop markets that Mountain View Hops excels in.

Thought this was the one place you could escape the daily news cycle? Sorry. We look directly at what this could mean for growing and brewing in the near term.  There will be impacts to supply, labor, pricing and relationships.

It’s a question that comes up constantly: “How do I get Brewers to talk to me”?  We go through some examples of how to get the conversation rolling, and even more fun, examples of things you can say to get shut down immediately.

We start by digging into the HGA’s data about 2019, which takes us into a conversation around your farm’s cost structure and specifically labor costs.  Along the way we get into changes at Lagunitas, James being bitter and we interview Mark from Mounta...

We break down the mechanics of small and large scale harvesters, because if you know *why* it’s done this way it will help you to design the *how* to meet your needs.

Thanks to Chad for asking about seasonal tightening of trellis wire, we get deep into cable loads.  This leads into a broader discussion of what else you can be doing during the non-growing season (there is no “off-season”, just a non-growing season).

This week we check in with James for a blow-by-blow of his trip to the Nebraska Growers and Brewers Conference, which was in Kearney, not Lincoln.  You’ll get the details of the presentations he gave and the reactions; it’s almost like being there (wit...

Today, Tuesday, 2/11, marks one year of podcasting madness from James and I.  We’ve learned so much and made a lot of new friends (you!), so to celebrate we are re-posting our first show, “Who is hopnology?”.