MISSION - PART ONE
To preserve, protect, and promote New York State’s hop growing history
Our journey into hops and brewing began with a book, Railroading in the Stockbridge Valley by John Taibi. Mr. Taibi had purchased and restored the Munns Rail Station, just one mile up the road from our home. The day his book was delivered from the publisher, I ran into him at the post office and purchased the book on the spot. Reading it, my mind was captured by the history of how our small town had raised tens of thousands of dollars in 1865 to incentivize the Midland Railroad to build a railroad through the Stockbridge Valley linking the Oneida Community and Colgate University to locations north, south and beyond. As a benefit, the small hamlets of our town and it’s farms and businesses were able to move goods and people more freely. A major agricultural product of those times was hops - the flower that protects beer from spoiling, offsets the sweetness of malt, and gives beer unique flavors and aroma. I know that now, but at the time I was consumed by the question “What’s a HOP?” The year was 1996, the year Madison County Historical Society held the first “Madison County Hop Fest” to celebrate Madison County’s hops history. The first commercial hop yard in the US was established in Bouckville, NY in 1808, just 8 miles from our farm and that farm began a major agro-economic movement that led to New York State being the center of hops production and brewing in the 1880’s. More local history - I needed to dig deeper.
In 1998, we attended the Hop Fest where I learned more about hops and history while my husband and brother enjoyed some New York beer in the brew tent. In those days, there were only a handful of breweries in New York State - factory breweries including Miller and Budweiser, regional breweries like FX Matt and Genesee Brewing, and some small craft breweries and brewpubs in the cities. The concept of breweries in rural areas linked to agriculture was not even a concept at the time. 1999 we went back to Hop Fest - that year I was given my first hop plant which sadly did not survive my black thumb, but we also began to have conversations with Cornell Cooperative Extension and rural sociologists from Cornell University, with home brewers and small commercial brewers, with historians, with local leaders and with other farmers about the feasibility of growing hops in New York State again. Could hops be economically profitable and bring tourism to our Central New York corridor with its deep roots in hop growing?
Those first meetings were fueled with enthusiasm and throttled by all the things we did not know - from where to get rootstock, to how to set up trellis systems, to whether they would still be susceptible to the fungal blights that killed off the industry in the early 1900’s. Out of the meetings came “The Northeast Hop Alliance”, some startup hop yards, a market study, and still more questions. We met in a variety of locations, one of which was the beautiful Horned Dorset Inn in Leonardsville, NY where the chef’s prepared a wonderful food and beer pairing featuring beers from Brewery Ommegang and beer washed cheese from Cooperstown Cheese Company. It was here that I first saw and experienced the words “slow food”. As the daughter of a dairy farmer, the term was unfamiliar but the concept was a big part of my heritage. We ate beef and drank milk from cows we raised, baked with eggs from our 4-H chickens, and grew and canned much of our yearly needs of fruit and vegetables. But life had removed me, if ever so slightly, from that station of self-sufficiency to a supermarket and fast food lifestyle. Slow food - it sounded like home. And another journey began.
We now had hops but I didn’t drink. In an effort to find my niche and drawing upon my experiences in home food processing, I developed some recipes using beer and hops. We took our beer and hop based mustard to the Hop Fest in 2004 to be served with local beef sausage . I was astonished when the crowd wanted to purchase it. So, I reached out to my friends at Cooperative Extension. Madison County had just started a new Agricultural Economic Development Program. The unknowns and estimated $2000 in startup costs frightened me, but the AED Specialist encouraged me to go for it. Nelson Farms was a great asset in both the logistics of bringing a new value added product to market and getting it processed safely and within regulation. And this is where we became involved in the local food and beverage industry. We became producers for the Madison County Bounty farm to table program. We took our mustard to breweries and brew festivals where we talked about hops and our efforts to bring hops growing back on a commercial scale to New York and we made friends with brewers who were interested in what was happening agriculturally. Somewhere along the line, I learned to like and then love craft beer.
We also began to collect “all things hop related” including several pieces of cherished china and porcelain and some very unusual pieces of historic hops equipment including a hops press / baler from a kiln in Poolville, a hop stove produced in 1875 in Munnsville from a kiln in Madison, and several smaller tools used to work the hop yards or in the processes of hops drying and evaluation. These tools and a number of old photographs are on display in our tasting room today for all to see.
TO BE CONTINUED….
