How hard could it be?

Last year my friend started brewing his own beer. I was doubtful that anyone could produce a drinkable beer in their basement. My dad experimented with a U-brew place years ago and even with professional help, it didn't go well. I'm pretty sure it went bad within two months of being bottled, and being a proper cheap Mennonite, he refused to pour it out. I endured one bottle, and that was plenty. So when this friend dropped off a sample, I was curious but not optimistic. As it turns out, if you do it right, you can make really good beer in your basement.

After a few batches, it was obvious that either this hobby was going to progress very slowly or he was going to quickly develop a drinking problem, so he pitched the idea of a collective to a few friends. He would continue to brew and experiment, while we would contribute money for ingredients and receive a portion of the finished product. I've never had so much beer in my house, nor has it ever been consumed so quickly. If I was drinking it all myself, I would be a disaster. Thankfully, the beer is good enough to bring along when we visit friends and serve when people come to our place.

The most exciting part for me is that I've started growing hops in my backyard to use in the beer. I had never knowingly seen hops growing before, but I had a garden already and figured "How hard could it be?" Like all projects that start with such a phrase, the answer is "Quite." Commercial hop yards use posts pounded into the ground with cables strung along the tops of them. Strings are then dangled from these cables and the hop bines (square shafted vines) climb the strings. You can buy rhizomes from existing hop farms, which are basically just pieces of root that you plant. It's not complicated, except the posts are generally around 18' high. The plants will go to 30' if they have something to climb, so I built this:

My wife is thrilled.

I ordered four varieties online and planted them this spring. All 8 plants came up and a few even made it to the top of my 20' structure with harvestable fruit to boot. The neighbours have been good about it, and their guesses about what I was building were pretty wild: an Easter bunny trap, a roller coaster, a gallows... For such a benign purpose, the construction was the scariest thing I've ever built. Standing at the upper reaches of my very extended extension ladder trying to hold boards and drill and my balance while reaching a little further than I ought to have done while the yet unsecured frame wobbled in the wind was very uncomfortable. Mama went inside so she wouldn't have to watch, but realized if she looked out the upstairs windows, she was looking straight at me. I'm told future yard projects are going to take some negotiating before materials are procured.

Climbing high

I've always been a climber. Every kid learns to climb: furniture, stairs, Daddy's legs... Some take it further; I took it outside. There was a big tree next to the house we lived in until I was seven. I remember it being huge, and while it was taller than the house, probably not actually that big as fir trees go. I could see up the trunk it was like a ladder going all the way up. The problem for me was the lowest branch was too high for me to reach. Ever watch little kids try to jump? All spastic effort and no lift, especially for spindly white kids. Dad said I could climb it when I could get up it myself. He probably figured he was teaching me some life lesson about independence while saving my mother's nerves.

I was more obsessed with that tree than Dad realized. Thinking that as long as I didn't have parental aid to the first branch, I would be abiding by the terms of the climbing rules, I talked my sister into giving me a boost. It was as glorious as I had hoped until Dad figured out where I was. I remember getting in trouble at the time, but soon after there was a rope hanging there so I didn't have to stand on my sister anymore.

My friend and I would climb up and down that tree, popping sap blisters and getting properly sticky. Sticky wasn't so bad, but it picked up all manner of dirt and didn't wash off with soap. We'd have to rub butter on our hands to get rid of it. Mom nearly had to cut out clumps of sapped hair after a long summer day in the tree.

That tree had a natural limit for climbing. Just below the level of the roof peak, maybe about 20' up, there was a thick mat of sticks and debris that somehow collected there. We would sit up under that mat and spy out the neighbourhood. Eventually, I got bored of only going to the sticks and had a closer look. I decided I could get through, and I was right. I only stopped when the branches became what I felt was dangerously small for holding my little seven year old frame. There wasn't much between me and the very top. Being quite proud of myself and not being a really forward-thinking child, I decided to shout and wave to my mother when she came into the backyard. That was the second time I got in trouble for climbing that tree. If that tree hadn't been so close to the house, I think she might have cut it down before my dad came home that night.

We moved when I was seven and I searched in vain for a new fir tree to climb. I did find plenty of aspens, and I figured out that I could shimmy up even the skinny ones. I wasn't nearly so high as the old tree, but these ones were so bendy, I would hang on as high as I could reach, and jump out. The tree would bend me all the way to the ground and then whoosh back upright when I let go. I quit doing that when one of the trees broke off as I was still a couple feet from the ground. I was still hanging onto the top half of the tree as it cracked me on the top of my head.

Now it is mountains, an occasional rock face, and my roof to clean the gutters, but I still love to climb. In a couple months I'll be out pruning my plum trees, climbing around hacking off branches, feeling like a little kid again (except now I'm allowed to play with axes and saws all I want). I should have bought a ladder years ago, but this gives me an excuse to swing around the branches and get in touch with my inner child/primate.