What matters most in your growing?

Breweries are awesome! They are a social gathering place where people can come together and enjoy one another's company. Hop yards not so much. Hop yards require a lot of work just like any thing else in agriculture. Its not really full of glamour or anything though it is a real trendy thing to get into these days it seems. Having been growing now for four years or so its really cool to see how things have progressed. Its a great thing but it also is a slippery slope for some.

That being said, as a grower you have to ask yourself what kind of grower you want to be and what interests you the most. Is it being the focal point, being in every snap shot on instagram or facebook throughout the entire process or is it simply succeeding in creating a bumper harvest for brewers. We live in a media hyped times for sure. God knows I have taken some hits for not promoting more or shooting videos, but what these people fail to realize is the Hops are supposed to be the product not the farmer/grower. Sure we have to establish the relationships, but in the end you live or die as a business model by your product.

We have always thought it best to simply concentrate on growing like a few of our grand fathers did. Can you recall the Virginia tobacco farmers throwing up pics out on the farm or Hanover tomato farms doing the same? I doubt it. Its a pretty modern thing, but lets face it folks no matter how many pics you snap and throw up on social media its not really going to change the true reality that growers face. The folks that know you personally are the ones you need to be leveraging. Not reaching out to people that you likely will never meet nor purchase hops from your operation. You are not really going to find these folks on facebook, rather growers need to be out there engaging the process in person and supporting the Brewers Guilds and Home Brew Clubs.

We have some exciting news to break regarding our commitment to the Home Brew Clubs in January 2014!

On a trip out to Oregon once, I had the opportunity to have this social media topic of discussion with a commercial grower. Sure they have a facebook page and all but no twitter or other pages. The facebook page is merely a landing page. I ask him why that was, having seen so many folks blowing it up on facebook back in 2012 with hops pics and such. He told that he already knew his customer. They knew him. With over 300+ acres of Hops he wasn't kidding. Third generation farmers and not growers really new to the game of Craft beer who think that its merely a trendy thing to do. I ask him about all the new growers, especially outside the Northwest and he calmly wished them the best of luck. I learned a lot from that experience. The dedication to the product, to the growing and to nature.

We put up Homegrown Hopyards to act as merely a resource for others looking for information about growing hops in our area or region. Its not perfect nor is it meant to be any thing more than a combination of our experiences as well as others on the internet that we have met, visited or been impressed by. If people truly want to experience the farm, they call us and we have them come out and spend a day with us--planting, stripping, composting, or harvesting. Otherwise, what true purpose does it sure save vanity.

We have learned what we need to concentrate on, what we need to produce and who our customer is now and who it will be in the future. In the end, this it what matters to a true committed grower. The notoriety of growing a particular hop may be perfect for a publicity spot, but only if you leverage that into a sales channel for your harvest.  Going over board in this manner can backfire as well. If you only have 200 plants or so and even if you have an incredible yield, realistically you are not looking at providing hops for very many people and facebook and social media can draw you thousands of eyeballs. You could conceivably spend considerable time fielding calls or emails/messages that you would have to turn away in large part because you truly only have enough yield at your disposal to accommodate a small run from one brewery.

This contributes to the large scale vs. small scale issue. Its why a lot of major production breweries may have an unwillingness to commit to a small scale operator except maybe for a special Harvest Ale or small offering. Its scale and they are producing such large runs they lock in their hop bill via contracts long before they require the hops to brew. This should not deter the small scale operator, but should drive them to spend more time working on their growing regimens and less time marketing---lets face it that's what facebook pages have become- for customers they cannot even service with hops any way.

The other side is a few growers we know and have provided plant material over the years, fly like we try to do under the radar in large part because they do not own the land in which they grow upon. This happens when you contract to grow on someone elses property. In effect you are a tenant and your landlord has no desire to have people showing up on the property on a whim to check out the hops. That's not what they signed on for and in fact there is an insurance liability around this as well. This model is apparently lost on a few folks who do not understand this concern.

Eventually, you reach the point in the road where you have to decide "what matter most". For us, its scale and quality of product. You have to reach a point where you decide to buy property, expand and grow full time and probably not just hops.

To the media end however, in 2014 in working with one of our brewery partners we will be doing some intense video formats but in this case its our intent to promote the brewery's commitment to local growers and local economies via agriculture partnerships that is truly going to be on display. Its not about us or the team we have put together, but about bringing more Virginia breweries on board to support other growers.