Just to throw it out on the table, its really hard to find time to sit down at a computer to post a blog while harvesting.
In the past few days/nights, it's all a blur, we have been working our way through Willamette's, and ran through some Mt. Hood's as well. Most likely by sometime in the early evening we will be moving on to Cascades.
Here is the only picture I have that follows the sequence started earlier. After the trucks leave the field they drive to the picking machine (large building in the picture). The trucks will pull through the doors and park inside where the driver and another person will hang the hops to ready them for their run through the machine. Our machine pictured below runs 24 hours a day in two shifts. The transition between shifts is fairly smooth so that hops are continuously flowing through and happens at 6am and 6pm.
Here is a picture of one burner running during the night. We dry the hops at around 140 degrees Fahrenheit for about 9 hours on average. Hopefully more about this will come up later.
Hops that have finished drying laying on the kiln floor. We have to let the hops cool down before we send them up the conveyor on the far right of the photo to the baling room.
When working with the night shift you get to see wonderful sunrises. There are not really any clouds in the sky, but it is still great sight. In the middle of the photo you can see the "trash" pile beginning to form, take note of its size (it will change drastically as time goes on).
3 comments:
Great pics. I guess the trash pile is the unwanted material after the cones are removed - same as in the google earth pic. Just keep taking photos, you can post later when not so busy.
TD
how many trucks do you guys have?
The number of trucks per machine depends on how far away the field we are harvesting is. The greater the distance the more trucks we need to keep the stalls full at all times. Usually the number will range between 7-10 trucks per machine per shift.
Tyler
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