I believe i mentioned earlier about this "wild" hops plant i found in a back alley in Vancouver that had gone ape shit and climbed up to the power lines. Well i made the call that it was Harvest day on a day that i was relatively kid free so i went to the gym to get stretched up for the harvest. In the car i had smartly placed a rake and some bags, and in my head i had a dream. I was a bit sweaty and short sleeved when i began the operation finding a 2 hour parking spot right by the alley where the said plant lives. I started plucking hops flowers from the plant.. one at a time, and then that thing happened that happens when you start to harvest from plants. You become amazed by how much "product" the plant produces. When you look at a plant and you see "fruit"... (hops flowers in this case) you see a bunch but then when you get closer and start handling the plant and looking behind the leaves you see more and more, and then you become in tune with the general structure of the plant and how it produces. Beans are really good for that because the beans hide under the leaves of the plant... it is really fascinating stuff.
Then you notice that your sweaty arms and hands are starting to have an allergic reaction to the hops plants but you say to yourself "I will not be defeated"... "Next time i will bring gloves and a long sleeve shirt but for now this is my window and i can fail or succeed". The history of me is to always overdue it, that's just the way I roll... sometimes i can even start to recognize it when it is happening, but i just want more and more and more free hops. It was about the time i was leaping up in the air with a rake to bring down the plant to harvest level that i ran into one of the local residents. He smiled and said "you making beer", and we talked for a bit... apparently nobody has ever harvested these hops for 9 years, which is a far as he goes back with respect to this neighbourhood. Very Human... apparently there has been a major hops shortage for a while and a major hops plant has been going to waste for years. Well i had to roll after a while to pick my oldest kid up from school so i dumped out the harvest and put some lotion on my arms.
I was running a bit late to the school so i kind of jogged the last few blocks and then it wasn't until i was standing in the hall with all of the other parents that i realized that i smelled like man sweat and hops... perhaps reek is a better word than smelled. Also there was the red blotches all over my skin from the hops irritation.. the good part was that i was given a wide birth in the school hall... no need to get involved with that gossip yappery... our mind needs to focus on curing them hops.
Given that we were set to go to the Bold Point Farm stay and the raw fact that our house is an insane asylum where anybody is just constantly buggering anything they can get their hands on i went for the quick dry (cure) method. I had read about roasted hops and that was my game. You have to look at the big picture in these times:
I have Hops, i want to use hops, how can i make hops available for the future. I had 2 days before we went away for 4 days and Cory wasn't home when the hops man came a calling on his back door... it would have been great... a dedicated friend brewer gets a surprise visit from an overzealous Robertson all shocked up from a few hours of hops picking and feeling generous with the hops.
No problem, hops cured bagged and frozen for winter brewing... only a fool would disagree.
So the city put in a new "roundabout" by my house and i envision a metal "art" statue that a tubor from that hops plant can climb up and produce... i also have big plans for that plant to be subdivided so that it becomes a common species in the back alley behind my house. Remember the biggest part of farming is planning, the plants do the work.
