Pack my bags, I'm moving to Alpha Beta Hops
Idyllic is the only way to describe my morning at Alpha Beta Hops. It was one of those warm mornings that comes in advance of a very hot day, but is totally wonderful because it feels like a treat when you remember winter!
I showed up bright and early at 8 AM and was treated to a great conversation and a cup of tea with Steve Pierce. Our conversation covered a wide range of topics including organic farming, travel, OSU research, family, the trend towards small and local family farms in the lower Rogue Valley, GMOs, and weather. And when Steve's wife came home I got to talk about Berkeley and books, always a great treat, and walked away with a fresh warm blueberry muffin and a bottle of home brewed beer.
Though it is certainly now on the map as wine country, many may not know that the Rogue Valley used to have its fair share of hop farms. Before starting his own farm, Steve did his hops research at the Grants Pass Historical Society, discovering some good information about the locations of historic hop farms and a smattering of stories about the people who ran them. He thought that the last hop farm in the area closed with the 1989 harvest from Sunny Brook Hops, which appears to have had some issues with hazardous materials.
The 250-acre Sunny Brook Hop Yards by Grants Pass was the last, large hop grower outside of the Willamette Valley. In the late 1980s, it announced that it was stopping production; the property was sold in 1989 to the Naumes family’s Wild River Orchards, who planted the site with pear trees. The City of Grants Pass purchased the former Sunny Brook Hop Yards in early 2006 for a future park, and this place is now called the River Road Reserve.
Read more about hops in Southern Oregon.
In many ways, when you're here in the summer it feels very similar to the Yakima Valley, with dry hot days. In fact, it is so dry and hot that they heat up a greenhouse without any assistance from a heat source (other than the sun) and blow the hot air into a drying room after the hops have been harvested! No, not using this historic beauty quite yet.
The Pierce Family decided to start a hop farm in 2008 and planted their first Cascade rhizomes in 2009. Before that Steve was in the Navy and retired to teach middle school Social Studies, then the family had cattle, and then grew hay, and then converted organic hops. But you can feel this evolution on the farm, and I felt like I was watching a work in progress and a living place, whether that was in the way they grow hops or the wonderful large organic garden or the proximity of multiple generations of the family.
The goal was to grow hops organically, but also to establish a family farm. Touring around I saw a multitude of projects, heard great stories about the farm and the family's travels, and met granddaughter Lily (who is celebrating her first birthday this week). I also met a duck couple and saw amazing marble sculptures, wind turbines, a large organic garden for the family, a home brew house, and a grape arbor covering a deck with a huge table for family meals. Did I mention that I kind of didn't want to leave.
Too bad I don't speak German.
When they really started work Steve did more than just historical research, he also talked about contacting folks at OSU and spending good chunks of time online seeing what others had done in the organic farming world (there aren’t many, so the searches weren’t overwhelming). Because they were going organic, they bought juniper poles (locally sourced) rather than the treated wood used in non-organic farms, installed the whole farm trellis system themselves and in accordance with organic regulations, and planted their bines. However, they were fighting with their soil, which was heavy and full of rocks.
Those juniper polls are still there, but now they are experimenting with different types of hops that may be more suited for their climate and soil. It probably could go without repeating, but in this part of the Rogue Valley soil is the issue, though disease is much less of a problem. The bines aren't as susceptible to mildew because the weather is warmer and the airflow better, and at Alpha Beta they have a small herd of sheep that comes in to deal with the ever-present weeds, eating both the weeds and the hop leaves up to the level that they can reach, which improves airflow.
They're doing lots of cool things out there, including experimenting with planting lower alpha hops, which they sell to herbalists, and working with WOOFERS volunteers (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). With the help of WOOFERS, 20-somethings come in the spring with their tents to prepare the fields and then return again in the fall for harvest. As Steve was talking I immediately thought of the tent cities that sprung up around hop fields in the Willamette Valley before mechanization. While the hop harvest there is a more “gentrified experience” at Alpha Beta Hops, it's still hard work balanced by good people doing good work.
I ended my day in Roseburg with another Steve (Bahr, of Breburg), an evening concert in the park, and another kind person handing me a warm blueberry (and rhubarb) treat.
