Hop Harvest Begins

It is harvest time. When I originally conceived this plan for growing hops, I had visualized exactly how I would harvest the little bastards. Two poles clamped to the fence below and the gutter above. Plastic mesh netting strung between the poles. This allows the hops to grow as crazy as they want to all the way up to around 16 feet. Hops grow much taller than that, but hell, I'm doing what I can. Anyway, the plan was to make the poles easily detachable so that the poles could be hung up somewhere to let the hop flowers dry out before using them.

This worked perfectly, of course.

Everything was hung up somewhere dry and sheltered. The remaining plan is to wait until most of the water drops out of the hop flowers and then harvest them as the bitter oil sacs are ripe.