NC Hops Growers Meeting-Nov.2!

Over 30 people responded to our Doodle poll for a hops grower meeting and we have selected the date that most people are available.

 

The Hops Grower Meeting will be Friday, November 2 at 1:00 PM.  We will meet at the Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center in Mills River.  Here are directions: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/directions2.html. 

If you are unable to attend this meeting in person, you can call in.  I have set up a conference call with freeconference.com.  That means the long-distance charges will be yours.  Dial 1-218-936-4141 and enter participant access code: 9627077.  You will be able to enter and exit as you please during the meeting.

If you can’t come in person or call in but would like to participate, please try to send someone else from your operation. If that doesn’t work either and you want to have input, please send me your comments and suggestions.

The purpose of this meeting is to share our 2012 experiences (good and bad), plan how we can work together in the coming year, get input on the varieties to be included in our next two year research project, and outline our needs for future research and outreach.  The goal is to help grow a healthy North Carolina hops industry!  If you are not yet a grower but interested in becoming one, you might also find this interesting.  This will be an informal, facilitated sharing meeting. There will not be any formal presentations like at a conference. I will have a laptop and projector set up, so if you want to show any pictures from your hop yard, please bring them on a flashdrive.  The meeting will run as long as the momentum is there.  I expect that to be around 4:00 or 4:30.

FYI, I did just receive an entire bale of coir twine, 2600 strings, 21 feet, 100# weight.  That’s enough to last me about 13 years at the rate I use it, so we might want to have a discussion about how to make the best use of it.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. This meeting is for you!

Also, please help spread the word about this meeting. I don’t have the email addresses for everyone who answered the Doodle poll!

(Once again I apologize for any multiple notices because I will send this out via several lists and platforms)

 Jeanine

We are nearing the end of one of our hops research grants and we would like to get some feedback about whether we are making a meaningful contribution to the knowledge base about growing hops in the Southeast. We have a hops website (http://nchops.soil.ncsu.edu/ ), post about hops on our blog (http://ncalternativecropsandorganics.blogspot.com/search/label/hops ), post some of our Powerpoints (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/programs/herbs/crops/hops/2012%20Hops%20Field%20Day%20Presentation_Raleigh_July.pdf), and give presentations at numerous conferences and workshops in the Southeast. If you are growing hops or interested in growing hops, we’d like to know if the information we are providing is helpful to you. We will also be producing a hops production leaflet this winter.

We know you are busy, so if you could just answer these three questions with “yes” or “no”, we would very much appreciate it. If you have just discovered us, please review the information we've provided before answering.

Please respond in the comment section below, or if you would like your name added to our hops email list, please send your responses in an email to Jeanine_Davis@ncsu.edu.

1. Do you know more about growing hops now then you did two years ago?

2. Are you more knowledgeable about hop varieties now then you were two years ago?

3. Is there more information available to you about growing hops then there was two years ago?

(PS, we apologize if you are getting this multiple times via email, FB, etc.)


Thank you, Jeanine Davis and Kelly Gaskill

Let's Have a Hops Grower Meeting!

Within the next month we would like to have a hops grower meeting so we can all share our 2012 experiences (good and bad), plan how we can work together in the coming year, get input on the varieties to be included in our next two year research project, and outline our needs for future research and outreach.  The goal is to help grow a healthy North Carolina hops industry!  If you are not yet a grower but interested in becoming one, you might also find this interesting.

I have provided a link to a Doodle poll so we can select the date that most of us can make a meeting in Mills River (my building, right next to the Asheville airport and the Sierra Nevada brewery under construction!).  We can probably link some folks in by conference call, too.  So if you can’t make it in person, write in the comments section on the Doodle poll that you would like to call in (I’ll see what I can arrange-you will incur the long-distance phone charges).  If neither of those work for you, you can send in your comments to me in an email (Jeanine_Davis@ncsu.edu) about the past season and what you would like to see done in the future. We will share those during the meeting and then send a transcript of the meeting to everyone on this list who wants it.

Also, I will be giving a presentation on organic hops production at the Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Greenville, SC on Sunday, October 28. I would love to have some of you in the audience!  Here is info about registration:  http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/sac/.

Here is the link to the Doodle poll to indicate what dates you are available, or not, for the hops grower meeting

http://www.doodle.com/q747fpdf2757takk

(PS, we apologize if you are getting this multiple times by email, FB, blogs, etc.)

Thanks!  Jeanine Davis and Kelly Gaskill