Page 53 - Beverage Master December January 2020

Craft Ag Production

Norton’s Hop Farms in Springfield, Oregon. Since
2008, they have grown Cascade and Nugget vari-
etals on their family-run, certified organic hop farm.
Because they’re organic growers, their post-harvest
routine is a little different than others.

“Well, we obviously don’t have to spend the time
applying the herbicides or pre-emergent weed kill-
ers,” said Don Norton. “Most of my days are spent
doing a lot of grass cutting and weeding out in the
fields. We don’t chemically treat for unwanted
growth, so it has to be continually weeded and
mowed. We get a lot of blackberry growth in this
area in addition to the grass and weeds, so it all
has to be kept up with regularity. I do get basic
soil testing done to see if we need to add lime and
adjust pH levels in our fields. We don’t fertilize until
just before we expect the new growth to appear,
and that can happen in early January.”

In between weeding and cutting, Norton spends
time in the off-season on equipment maintenance
as well as checking and winterizing his water and
irrigation lines. He doesn’t have the same sales and
marketing push that some larger volume farmers
do because one of the benefits of being a smaller
volume, organic farm, is that his product is gener-
ally sought after and already spoken for by regular
customers.

“We’ve sold to our local craft breweries in the
past, but as of late, our harvest is sold to a locally
well-known organic herb company—Mountain Rose
Herbs in Eugene, Oregon. They need the whole
flower of the hop, so we supply that to them.
There’s also an emerging market for our hop cut-
tings and vines for use in-store or in other decora-
tive displays, and also by local florists that like to
use them in their creations.”

“One thing that makes us different than a regular
hop farm is that we don’t plant any cover crops or
use any mulches in between rows,” said Norton.
“Instead, we lay a ground cloth with holes cut out
over the growing area for our hop plants to grow
through. Doing it this way helps keep our weeds
and grasses to a manageable level so we can
remain organic.”

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