My father treated this more as a business than a lifestyle. And I try to treat it more as a business. Farms need to be professionally managed. It's not enough to know how to farm. It takes very diverse skills.
Hop season starts in spring, when the plant's roots produce shoots that begin the vines.
Workers tie twine from the ground to wires 18 feet high, strung horizontally across the fields. In mid-May, they train the shoots, two from each plant, to follow the twine with clockwise spirals. There, a network of pipes and valves, controlled by timers, sends water throughout the fields, dripping water, pesticides and nutrients to the plants. Irrigators would put water on one side of a pole, then move it to the other. Now the farms with this new system can control irrigation from the office.