Peter Hopkins shows some students from Williams College, who offered to help, how to plant the roots.

POWNAL, Vt. — A few dozen green thumbs kicked off a new organic hops business Saturday the old-fashioned way — a planting party.

 

Peter Hopkins, John Armstrong and John Neville started Hoppy Valley Organics and are growing 1,000 hops plants on an acre of land on Route 7.

 

The hops will be sold to breweries as well as being used as an ingredients in sauces they'll sell. 

 

The first batch of the plants went into the ground Saturday with the help of dozens of friends, relatives and neighbors coming to their aid.

 

With Armstrong, who has a master's degree in agribusiness, and Hopkins explaining the process, the large group dug into the dirt to plant what will eventually grow into nearly 1,700 pounds of hops three years from now — the first year typically only sees a 20 percent yield. 

 

After two hours and all the planting completed, the large gathering then dug into food from neighboring farms and beer brewed from Hoppy Valley's future customer.

 

"It's incredible what a business can do with the support of friends and family," Hopkins said, while overlooking the crowd if about two dozen residents spanning from Pittsfield, Mass., to Cambridge, N.Y. 

 

The business has been nearly a year in the making. Hopkins was growing hops in his back yard and in conversation with Armstong, the two hatched the plan to grow them commercially.

 

In 2013, hops were taken off the U.S. Department of Agriculture's exception list for organic properties so for any beer to be labeled organic, the hops must be organic. Armstrong's family already owns certified organic land, so finding space wasn't an issue.

 

"The demand for organic hops mushroomed," Hopkins said. "If we were going to do this, we thought we'd go big or go home."

 

They spent eight months researching the plant and attended a hops conference. They found the plants are expensive to grow and labor intensive but that didn't deter them. It instead make them create their own ways of doing things. 

 

Hops grow to more than 20 feet tall and typically takes a lift to to crop them. The "hops" is really the flower, or cone, of the female plant. At Hoppy Valley, they rigged up a pulley system by planting them in an unconventional teepee arrangement. Instead of buying trellises for the plant to grow on, they went into the woods and chopped their own trees down.

 

"We adapted the process," Armstrong said, who boasts that he can grow anything. "We did it for half of what they said it would cost."

 

They ordered the roots of four different varieties of hops from the Northeast Hops Alliance. 

 

"We select the variety for several characteristics," Hopkins said, taking into account the yield, brewing properties, mature time and disease defense. 

 

All told, the group will be paying about $5,000 to kick start the business but the majority of that is the cost of an irrigation system, which was also designed and adapted by Armstrong.

 

They've been telling everyone they know about the hops farm and word of mouth has already brought them customers. They've had conversations about selling the hops to a brew pub in Hartford, Conn., and to the Maine-based brewery Peak Organic. 

 

The hops are being grown on an acre of land on Route 7.

Farella said they want to use all locally sourced products but hops are difficult to find. Having the ingredients so close will help the brewers turn their hobby into a career.

 

"We want to be all organic and locally source everything ... . We want to support local business," Farella said on Saturday, when he brought two kegs of a home brew to share that he hopes will soon become a commercial product. "Right next door we have organic hops."

 

Farella also got his hands dirty planting what will become the ingredients in the brews he'll be selling.

 

But not all of the hills were planted on Saturday. A single row of poles were put up but no hops were planted because Hopkins is saving those for something special. 

 

In his research, he found and acquired wild hops from Berkshire County, Mass., the Northeast Kingdom and Champlain Valley, N.Y. — all of which are more than 100 years old. He'll be transporting those roots to Hoppy Valley.

 

"They all have been growing since the 1800s," Hopkins said. "Brewers will have something they can't get anywhere else."

 

After the harvest, Hoppy Valley will use some of the hops to make mustards and hot sauces, which will be sold locally and online. However, they'll need a commercial kitchen to sell via the Internet or in other states. 

 

"The commercial kitchen is a hurdle," Hopkins said, adding that Vermont laws allow home kitchens but to sell online or in other states, a commercial kitchen is required. "We'll take that plunge when we understand our capacity."

 

While the new business seems to have big plans for growth, none of the principals are quitting their jobs. The size of the farm isn't large enough to make enough of a profit so the business will be on their spare time. But at least when they tip back a beer in the future, they'll know exactly where the ingredients came from.