Hops trellis establishment

The poles are all planted.  It is time to work on the trellis which will connect the poles.

The first step was to prepare the anchors. We have very large anchors.  Sinking them into the stiff clay which lies beneath our topsoil was not going to be an easy task.

Howard uses his grinder to sharpen the anchor so it will cut into the soil easier.

The power drill with an adaptor will be used to drive the anchor into the ground.

The drill was working quite well.

But after 3 or 4 anchors being set, the batteries used to power the drill ran out of energy.

That was no problem.  This became a perfect excuse for us to purchase yet another new toy for the farm, a brand new generator.  Howard has been wanting one of these for a long time....

The anchors were quickly set after the generator investment was made.  Howie provided the extra muscle power needed to manually drive the anchors the rest of the way into ground.

The next step was to prepare the cables which will connect the poles to the anchors.

All ready to go.

Meanwhile, our 1st year hops plants were growing faster than the trellis was being created.  I decided that it would be worthwhile to establish a short mini trellis (7 ft tall) using the poles and old rolls of baler twine we had laying around from the hay making days on our farm.

Amber and I had this task done in no time at all.

The baby hops plants were grateful to have strings to stretch upward on. Each plant had to be wound clockwise around the string.  I made the mistake of winding them counter-clockwise for the first 50 for so plants.  ughhhh... I had to go back and rewind them.