My trip to the farm: meeting Patrick Leavy and The Oregon Hophouse
I had a great trip to Aurora this week to talk with Patrick Leavy about the history of The Oregon Hophouse. I've said this before, but hop country in Oregon is amazingly beautiful. I didn't take many pictures because we were too busy talking, but there is a lovely slideshow on their web site with an assortment of farm shots that are much better than this one.
The farm is nestled up next to a neighboring vineyard that heads up a hill and feels much cozier than Crosby and Goschie thanks in part to the geography (the hops are bigger now too, which make a difference).
In 2007, the Leavy Farm began organic hop production and The Oregon Hophouse became the first certified organic hop farm in Oregon, providing US grown organic hops to brewers around the country and Canada. Certified by Oregon Tilth, organic hop production has since become the major focus of the farm. (The Oregon Hophouse)
Because this is a partially organic farm, we talked about soil resting and I saw ladybugs in various life stages.
This is a Century Farm, which means it has been operational for over 100 years. It has been in the Leavy family since 1912 and hops have been grown there since the 1920s.
You can learn more about Century Farms in Oregon in our Oregon Century Farm & Ranch Program Viewer, which maps the number and names of farms and ranches and shows density of farms and ranches by county.
See http://ocfrp.library.oregonstate.edu/node/31041 for Leavy farm info.
Leavy himself has run the farm since uncle died in 1978. The farm has grown different crops over the years, though as I understand it the primary crop has always been hops. At it's biggest, the farm had 300+ acres of hops, though now it's closer to 50, with nearly half being organic.
Some of the fields on the farm are taking a three year break to transition to organic, while others are empty because they'll be converted to filberts.
Leavy has a solid knowledge of hops history and talked about farms in Germany and America, with special attention to Oregon and Washington hops. He is curious about what moved where and when, so much of our conversation felt like a research topic or collection development brainstorming session, with Leavy volleying ideas for what people could write about or investigate under a very general topic of hops in Oregon or the impact of Oregon's hops on the world. I'm not the first person to write about how the industry has changed, nor is this the first time that over written about how it has changed, but I do want to offer a bit of perspective. There used to be 25,000+ acres of hops in Oregon, with several hundred families growing. Now there are 5,000 acres, grown by 20 families (10 families here since before the 1930s). Those pre-1930s farms were smaller and spread over a larger geographic footprint, including MANY in Lane County. We considered the impact of Prohibition, mildew, mechanization, and the changing needs of bigger companies (e.g. a farm with 300 acres has different needs from one that is 60). We pondered why the Livesly and Seavy families aren't in the business anymore, and thought a bit about who is still around to tell the tale of the numerical decline. We talked about how once upon a time The Oregonian regularly published hop market reports.
We didn't talk about the dog, but I had to take a picture...
A good portion of our conversation also centered on mechanization and labor. With mechanization came a change in when labor was needed; today picking isn't nearly as labor intensive as it was, now it's the stringing in April.
Leavy shared thoughts on the changing workforce and labor market, especially the influence of immigration reform on labor in Oregon. When the bulk of the work was in picking (so pre-1950), families from Portland made up a good percentage of their farm's work force. Remember, this was when the bulk of the work was picking in September; but when mechanization came, there was much more work in April (when you put up strings), which meant school got in the way. As is the case with much of agriculture in Oregon, most workers are from Mexico and Central America, and Leavy says those numbers are decreasing based on immigration reform.
It was a morning of rich and honest conversation, in a great setting. I'm already pondering oral histories.