Hoppin’ Through History, by Jaimee Brentano
Oregon has always been knows as an agriculturally unique region. As you drive up and down I-5, you may pass by twenty different crops in the span of just a few miles. With over two hundred commodities grown in the state, it is no doubt that our mild climate and dry summers are in our favor. After this unusually warm and peculiarly early spring, you may notice all of the new plants pushing out of the ground and begin to think about what to do with the small morsel of landscape you claim. For all of the beer enthusiasts, now is the perfect time to plant your hop rhizomes.
Yes, hops. Craft and home brewing has taken over Oregon and the Willamette Valley. This shift in the brewing industry has in turn created a shift in the hop industry. Oregon hops are planted as rootstocks, or rhizomes, and begin to sprout in the early spring. The hop is a vine that is trained to crawl its way upwards toward the top of a cable running through a series of small telephone poles. You can read and listen to both growers and brewers on the USA Hops website to find out just how these vines give us that so highly desired bright green cone used for brewing the beers of the world. Today, these cones are mechanically harvested and dried. However, that was not always the case. Oregon has a rich history in hops and brewing dating back to the late 1800’s. The problem is, nobody was tracking its history until a couple of years ago. That’s when Tiah Edmunson-Morton came along.
In search of Tiah, I wandered up to the fifth floor of the OSU Valley Library. Once there, I came across a display case full of pint glasses and old newspaper articles. While perusing through the paraphernalia, I came to find that this showcased the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives (OHBA). Tiah, OHBA founder and curator, told me the story of how the archive got started in 2013.
Photo courtesy of Paul Miller, Flickr
It was a summer wedding, between an archivist and a librarian. Tiah was attending to help celebrate the special act, but first joined them on a tour of Rogue Farms in Independence, Oregon where the ceremony was being held. Though it was June and the hop yard had been fairly inactive for several months, their tour guide painted a picture of the history of the farm for its guests which rose the question, “Has anyone been archiving this?” A few months later, the OHBA started.
When I asked why she got started being the curator of the archive, Tiah frankly stated that “nobody was doing it.” Tiah, an archivist and instructor with the OSU Libraries Special Collections and Archives, was looking for something more that allowed her to explore her interest in science and history. Tiah considered how our school is a land grant university with an extension service, a partnership with farms allowing for the application of research. She said with other agricultural commodities already being archived, it was hard to deny that Oregon State University had an impact on the hops and brewing industry. As the story began, Tiah took me back in time to show just what that impact was.
Beginning in the mid-1800’s, hop growing was a family affair. There were not these large, hundred acre lots we see today. Instead, many families had their own 20 acre or fewer plots that were hand harvested by the family. As we reach the 1890’s, we begin to see research being started on the rootstocks of the plants. However, Prohibition hit Oregon five years earlier than the rest of the country and the ban of alcohol in 1914 changed the agricultural landscape in the Willamette Valley.
This is where Tiah told me she felt there was a gap in the history. Both before and during Prohibition, we know there were a lot of breweries. However, I could sense Tiah’s frustration as she expressed how little records there were from these eras. It seemed as if people did not care, or they just didn’t realize the significance of their operations at that moment in time. I am sure it was hard to foresee just what an impact Prohibition would be on hops, brewing, and even the country as a whole.
Hop yard – 1930,
originally collected from Agricultural Experiment Station Records
Some hop production continued through Prohibition and Oregon remained the top producer of hops for many years following the end of Prohibition. Since many families dropped their hop production during this time, commercial producers saw an opening and entered the market once prohibition was lifted. In the 1930’s, Polk County was named the “Hop Center of the World.” This new era of hops also gave rise to questions about what research can be done to help improve hop production. That is when the USDA and Oregon State University teamed up.
In 1930 the USDA began doing research on campus. The partnership between OSU and USDA arose before Prohibition, but was put on a pause for when the end product of hops was illegal to consume. However, when producers started growing commercially they ran into some management problems and one in particular is what sparked the USDA and OSU to dig up those old roots – downy mildew.
Improved experimental duster in operation, 1941 Station Field Day. Originally collected from a report by HE Morrison, Irwin Marks, & Dan Bonnell
Tiah laughed a little to herself when she told me about how researchers experimented with these dusters to help fight the pests and disease. She talked about how you see these pictures of field men testing the newly innovated duster with no protection, even riding on the back amidst the dust. The duster and many other developments in hop production have come out of the research done by OSU and USDA, in which growers got to be a part of during annual Field Days when they were invited to the test plots.
It was about this time that a breeding program was established at OSU. With the prevalence of pests corrupting their crop, researchers began to turn toward developing crosses of hop varieties that could withstand the imperfect conditions. This was a time when we started to see a relationship develop between the scientists and growers. Though this was much earlier than when the breeding program began, about 50 years in fact, Tiah told me one of her most interesting finds was a record that her own grandpa had come to visit the university to talk to the researchers in the early 1900’s. With the development of new varieties, the brewing scene has also changed and the relationship today has evolved to include the brewers as well.
Hop cone varieties in 1930. Originally collected from Agricultural Experiment Station Records
Since Post-Prohibition the hop growers were now fewer, but with larger lots, this created a shift in labor. No longer could a grower’s family just walk out and collect the crop. Instead, the grower had to recruit labor groups to come in and pick the cones at the peak of harvest. In some cases, it was soldiers that would do the picking. Those soldiers or prisoners of war that were held in the Valley during WWII were used as an Emergency Farm Labor program for harvest.
Camp Adair soldiers going to the Terhune hop yard – 1944. Originally collected from Agriculture Photographic Collection
Soldiers picking hops – 1945.
Originally collected from Agriculture Photographic Collection
In other cases, this meant recruiting the women and their children to leave the working husbands behind for two weeks in late summer. For my great-grandpa, Norman Ernst, this meant recruiting the Volga German families of the Portland area to travel down to his farm in early September to pick hops.
In an article by Vickie Willman Burns, Mollie Schneider Willman tells her story about growing up as temporary, migrant farm laborers and working for “Mr. Ernst.” As I read through the article, I enjoyed hearing about how the family would make preparations to camp on the farm for two weeks. They would load up themselves and their provisions on the back of a rail less flatbed truck and head out for the hop fields.
Orren Goff, check boss, at the Mitcoma hopyard watches Janiece Gerhard, 15, and Jorene Johnson, 17, dump a basket of hops into a hopper in preparation for sacking and weighing – 1946. Originally collected from Extension and Experiment Station Communications Photograph Collection
Reading through the article, vivid pictures would flash in my head as I resonated with the places described around the farm. The still, peacefulness of Horseshoe Lake where the camp workers would go swim. Or just down the road, to San Salvador Beach that met the Willamette River to go for a dip once the quota was met for the day. And Horseshoe Lake Farms, where my great-uncle still sells the juicy peaches to indulge on straight from the orchard. Willman’s story shows that though many things have change since the early days of hop picking, much of it has remained true to its roots. Through the years, there has been a lot of growth and development in the industry. But whether a hop grower, researcher, picker, or brewer, that tradition has always stayed the same – to simply produce good beer.