Hopfenernte - Tag 3: Das Grüne Gold der Hallertau

Hop harvest - Day 3: The Green Gold of the Hallertau

The hop picking is going exceptionally smoothly this season - no mechanical breakdowns or accidents so far (knock on wood!). The weather is also perfect even a little bit too warm and sunny. But the forecast predicts rainy weather for the days after Sunday, so we decided to start even earlier every day to take advantage of the good weather as long as we can. My working day now basically goes from 5a.m. until midnight - I'm rather knackered, I'm not going to lie.

The blip shows the Gold of the Hallertau - freshly picked hop cones. The small conveyor belt in our case drops them in a transport box. In the background you can see the picking machine, a 4 metres high, 4 metres wide, and 8 metres long behemoth, that has a constant noise level of approximately 120 dB. Normally a longer conveyor belt takes the hop cones to the kiln, where they are dried. However, at our farm the picking machine and the kiln are very far apart and the conveyor band would have to run straight across our courtyard - so we use the boxes instead.