Showing posts with label hops. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hops. Show all posts

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Farm Tours Come To A Close For The Year On A Soggy Note

Van Burnette tags a monarch butterfly
The past two weeks have been very busy for the farm and were a great way to end the 2012 tour season.  On Sept. 22 and 23 we hosted the ASAP Family Farm tour.  Around 120 people visited the farm where non stop tours were given by Van for both days.  It is rather grueling but hopefully people learned a lot about what all we do here on the farm.

Hops, as always, seemed to demand the most attention for the Farm Tour.  We also seemed to raise awareness for the importance of creating and maintaining native bee pollinator habitats and with our native blueberry study.  We also tagged a couple of monarch butterflies that were passing through.

The major tagging event for the monarch butterflies was reserved for the next weekend, Sept. 29 and our last official tour of the season.  Around 60 people showed up for this free event.  Folks started gathering early and so did the clouds.

The rain started during the release
 I managed to tag three monarchs and let the kids and adults release them after we taught the butterflies a few crucial words in Spanish.  Not all of the butterflies we eager to fly off as the one seen below seemed to wanted to stay on this young ladies hair.

All in all it was a good year, but we hope next year will be even better and hope to sponsor many fun events and have great Saturday tours with lots of folks.  The last shot seems to be a good ending for this blog.  You can just make out a monarch flying south after being tagged, saying goodbye to the farm.



Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Farm Video

We have just completed a great two week season of monarch reproduction at the farm.  There are more than 60 butterflies in the flighthouse with the majority being monarchs.
Look at this video for a brief visit.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

North Carolina State University Article

This is a posted article in the NCSU Perspectives On Line about my hops farm. http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/magazine/latest-news-spring-2010/hops.html

My farm continues to be envolved with as much reseach as we can get our hands on. I am very excited to be a part of what may be a new and upcoming food industry here in the state.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Hops on YouTube

I have spent the last two days creating a two part video of harvesting hops on YouTube. Yesterday I filmed me picking cones and explaining my trellis system. After picking the hops, I then taped the weighing, drying, and packaging of them.


Here is a sample of what is available now on YouTube:




Both of the video's will be available through the following YouTube addresses.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxEDb7rTJk0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNows9rMT58


It has been nice to finally finish harvesting the hops and due to the windy and dry weather, it has gone without a hitch. It appears that I will have harvested about 10 ounces of dried Cascades for the second harvest. I am hoping that the home brewers market will be an outlet for these.