An elaboration

Credit goes to my brother-in-law, Aurel, for taking and assembling these panoramic photos.

Glass Bottom Brewery LLC went from here:

to here:

only with, as I have mentioned, the help and advice of many individuals who proved their willingness, beyond any doubt, to help our business start and undergo its process of development. I thought that listing them for posterity might be appropriate at this point. Hopefully they will pardon the use of full names and my unwillingness to put them in any order but the one where their names surge into my head.

Ezra Bloom, the other less overt but equally important half of this business
Eric Williams
Dale Culleton
Matt Barnard
Ben Kreider
Jay Heath
Joe Burkhart
Aurel De St Andre
Bob Sinopoli
Jeff Minkler
Dennis Downing
Matt Blake
Wayne Burkhart
Lin Howitt
Dave Williams
Marylin Geller
Robert Bloom
George Whaling
Dave Shepard
Don Johnson

and others I will likely have to edit in.

For your viewing pleasure, here are more panoramic photos that show the yard in its progression to a (nearly) current state of development. Any questions about this process can be answered by emailing this account, or feel free to show up at the yard when we are present (on 41 north of GB and south of Division St) so long as you remember to park inside the field, not in my landlord's private driveway.

May I just add that having something tangible, even if we have yet to work out the issue of having a sign (due to residential zoning of the leased hop yard), is wonderful for a fledgling business that so far has been fueled only on unfulfilled dreams. In the future the hop yard will progress to being a place of growing plants and grazing animals. I can't wait.

More pictures from Aurel to come.

Evolution of a Hops Yard

Unfortunately hops yards of this magnitude do not spring out of the ground spontaneously, though it may seem that way from these pictures. It requires a lot of hard working and planning. Most of the credit must go to Master Farmer Evan Williams.

 

An empty field on route 41, just north of Great Barrington. 

Cut black locust - extremely strong, rot-resistant wood. Not pictured: countless hours of labor pealing the bark off the posts.

  The outside posts go in slanted away at an angle to help hold up the eventual weight of the plants pulling inward.

An excavator with an auger attachment drilled 5 foot holes into the ground, into which we buried the posts.

 Sixty posts pointed skyward.

Cabling.

Next year it will all be green (knock on wood).

- Ezra

Trending, Blogging, Surfing, Farming

Hi again to all you potentially existent readers of this attempt at modern-day media!

In accordance with what I understand to be the rules of the internet, if someone somewhere else said something about you, you have to link to it when you then go back and blog about yourself, your accomplishments, your thoughts, and your deepest darkest secrets.

All you old-school blog readers new we were starting a farm, now anyone that reads the Berkshire Eagle knows we're not only starting a farm, but we're building a structure just to grow a plant that's used exclusively for beer flavor and bittering. It's on Rt 41 North of GB and south of Division St. If you do come check it out, you will likely find us there, working on cable (all posts upright and all anchors set!) in order to get ready to finally plant our hop roots (rhizomes).

Anyway, back to self-referential writing/riffing on the article:

First, thank you to Ned Oliver for having the guts to walk right up and ask (and to you others that have allowed your curiosity to overcome your normal social inhibitions). If you are stopping, try not to stop right on the highway (41) or back up for 50 feet (seen that done twice) just to talk to us. Anyway, Ned quoted me (the less beer-oriented guy, Evan) on a bogus bit of made-up fairytale percentages about hop flavor accounting for 25 to 95% of what the beer tastes like. What I should have said was that hops contribute a different amount of flavor to different types of beers but that that amount is not quantifiable as a percentage. Sadly I need to work on my PR shtick.

What I can comment on when I'm not bungling through beer flavor interviews is that farming is work, and the work is always diverse. We have felled trees, shaved poles, rented equipment, contracted professionals, worked day and night to troubleshoot or build specialty tools, and that's before any tilling or planting.

And the bottom line? Without a saleable product like beer, even a specialty farm that grows hops (and shows off the polyculture by grazing sheep among the vines, but more on that later) is going to have problems with cash flow and profitability. For that reason, I have to extend a special thank you to my father, Eric, my landlord, Dale, and another professional in the area, Matt, for their free help and advice. A young farming brewing business partnership needs its volunteers (my dad and his countless hours), good landlords and operators (Dale owns the land we lease on 41 and helps with his own equipment) and outside professional contractors (Matt knows a lot about digging fence post holes, carpentry, excavation, and working efficiently). Anyone that wants to be a part should feel free to contact, our business is about inclusion and transparency, above all.

Thanks to all helpers, and hello to all potentially new readers.

Evan