welcome to recycled idaho where two recycling industry veterans brett eckhart nick snyder explore idaho businesses and organizations that are putting in the work to keep idaho environmentally and economically viable at the same time take a listen to how these entrepreneurs business owners and operators are making things happen in the great state of idaho on this boots on the ground i get a chance to walk around jackson hops with russell’s shoemaker i was blown away by the amount of infrastructure and work it takes to grow and process ops not only do these amazing farmers make some of the best hops in the world they are also able to recycle most of their byproduct so if you ever enjoy a cold beer make sure you thank a farmer check it out and stay tuned for a follow-up with nate and heather jackson all right today we’re going to do our boots on the ground over at jackson hops i got russell shoemaker here he’s going to show us around how you doing good how are you doing awesome where are we going to go first let’s go check out the field and see how

they’re doing in there let’s go like when did you plant all this stuff so this field was planted three years ago um they’re perennials so um they come back you know year after year so this is idaho seven but this crop right here was planted three years ago yeah oh it takes that long no no it’s a it’s a it’s a perennial so every year we are restringing yeah um and retraining turning the the binds up up the string all the string that they’re cutting right now okay is tied up top uh by hand so this machine here is just this is the bottom cutter okay just cutting the bottom bottom yeah and so then you can see how it lays straight those are more at an angle from the hill so when they’re laying straight those top cutters are pushing those tractors or the trucks through the field okay and cutting it and laying it down into the bed of the truck okay i guys see that yeah they’re following them what’s crazy man is like i wish everyone was watching this could like smell it man because it smells just like an

ipa yeah yeah it sounds literally like an ipa come there and grab that and split it right okay oh yeah get that rub those those lip line glands that’s yellow that yellow in there that’s the money lubilan lupulin and it’s that’s where they get the oil from here yeah and you’re running poly drip lines to which is just right down down each row right here yeah yeah we’re going to drip on everything do you have to like replace that every year um every 10 years oh okay every time yep unless uh i think it’s damaged unless it gets damaged um someone like it up or anything yeah no we uh it usually gets damaged but we go through a bunch of couplers so when did it i think we have 1500 miles of drip line on it when did uh harvest start um august 27th and how many days have you been home since august 27th i went home for about five minutes okay for five minutes yeah so you you literally live yeah you’re working here 24 hours a day 24 hours a day like but it’s kind of important this time of

year and for our show we’ve never done one on farming in general i just think so many people don’t realize how hard you all have to work man i guess people like their beer and we want them to yeah and be able to enjoy it keeping how much how much percent of the beer is accounted for i think we’re about one percent of the whole world over the whole world that’s awesome as far as hops go from here from here from right in this area right in here i think idaho and in general is yakima okay yakima in washington huge that’s like hop capital okay i think i don’t know if there’s 35 000 acres or something over there of hops but there’s a lot of hops farms in this area we’re second largest in the united states okay and so we have i think there’s 10 or 11 growers maybe 12 growers in this valley arena valley and we have arena valley down in here yeah it’s considered arena valley okay and we have the bench up there heavier ground up there we’re down here with sandy soils which helps with some drainage

what makes it why are there so many hops farms here um i’ll say day length soil okay uh and we’re really kind of protected from weather okay except for this year with a big wind storm there was a lot of wind just yeah it caused the whole valley but even north all northwest um washington and oregon on the same day different storms yeah the same day was head as well are there other really really big what’s like the biggest producing country of a of hops do you know that um it might be the u.s but yeah germany um i remember a post that like heather probably posted of like her and nate were like in a different country yeah germany it was germany okay and they went to like a hops farm in germany oh new zealand yeah i went to new zealand that was it they weren’t so they’re in new zealand new zealand they’re a lot smaller they don’t have mite issues like we have they’re pretty isolated i think the same thing with cobit right yeah yeah they’re isolated there you go yeah supposedly they’re better off than everybody well

you brought that up let’s just touch base on that real quick that’s covid it’s code but it’s 20 20. have it has come in has comet affected yeah it made things difficult um we also did a huge expansion this year on our facility yeah we added a third picker and some kilns and an extra baler and so that kind of created a challenge because yes farming is essential um and you would think everything that you know industries as far as manufacturing and stuff would be essential as well but it did scare us a bit so this guy real quick this guy’s just coming back from okay so this is another picker this is what we call the hybrid the front end is a german front end okay so he’s actually gonna end up dumping that on the ground and then hang it from the ground these other don howard pickers were hanging from the trucks so we had to okay this conveyor this year okay and this other one’s taking the trash all the cuttings the leaf and the stem everything and we’re chopping it there and then we haul that over to a

feed lot and he turns that into compost so this is the new one this is the new one but it’s tired still it’s been going nonstop for oh yeah 32 days now but they’re probably running oh i bet he’s got to be running about 70 vines a minute wow okay you want to be clean you want you know leaf and stems they they the steak comes out and and test for that they test how much uh you know the percentage of leaf and stem because you don’t want the buyers don’t want a dirty product because then they’re paying for trash and they’re going to pay less right so they come back gets tested can they negotiate advice for you usually it’s in contract so you have to be experts so are they buying this stuff by the pound from you they depend there’s contracts that are acreage and then there’s oh i would compare this in like the metal recycling world um because you don’t always know what the yield’s gonna be right right so it’s kind of like you’re waiting you could think it could be really good then you have a windstorm

and it comes and knocks ten to fifteen percent of your drop down so there’s not yep so it goes here drops that goes to the chopper so all it is right this is your arm breaker so all everything else here is getting fit for the cleaner so we have our greenhouse we have green ups here okay see that so this green hops coming up here going up for the cleaners up there okay we have dribbles here so this is another way to get rid of more leaf yep so you have trash in one and your green hops in the other was it sorted by the weight um yeah weight because your cones are going to roll see on these dribbles you know your cones are rolling yeah and your pitch is adjusted and you adjust them according to the variety all the varieties are different sometimes they’re more flared out some are more dense and really easy but it is about providing the best quality that we can yeah for for the buyer for the brewer so these smaller burners are running about 6 million btus wow 6 million btus with 100 000 cfm

on the two end ones around 10 million bts and they’re just pumping all that they’re pushing a bunch of heat blowing it with these fans into an empty room pushing warm air up we’re gonna go look at that we’re gonna go up to the sauna okay it’s warm okay so these are your kilns we’re pushing 135 degrees up here these these uh ladies are sitting up here for you know these are sometimes four ten hours yep underneath so it’s vented all right so it’s got louvers in the floor this conveyor is bringing them in there’s a green hops coming in three knobs coming in coming to your layer so there’s your layer bell giving you a nice even oh okay even floor to give yourself an even dry without stepping on it because when you start stepping on and compressing your quality goes down but also your drying ability and this whole really uneven move yeah it’s all it’s all automated right as it feels it’s going to hit that limit switch and move everything this way just a little bit okay a little bit and then when we start when we fill this

we have to go all the way back to the end and this is some of the quality you’re talking about they’re pulling some of this stuff down yeah so we’re holding here yeah okay pull anything big making sure those ends are worked we’re dropping them and baling them at uh you know eight and a half to ten and a half moisture okay so we’re we’re having to push them there so how long do they stay in each word it depends on variety but these sevens are about a nine to ten hour drive oh okay that’s not that bad so they’re up here for nine to ten hours and and my ladies up here have done an excellent job they’re the ones that uh make sure that these rooms are taken care of and okay it’s a dif it’s difficult to dry off see but you don’t need to turn it at all once it’s in there you don’t need to like turn it um if they find a wet spot they will oh okay but really they they know their rooms by now they’ve been doing it for four years they know certain tendencies

of the rooms and they’ll turn it if they need to okay um they’ve been doing all right i like some of the best in the world i love it they’re dropping a room right now oh cool so that one’s ready yeah this one has gone through it’s time so is it ready to bail that way no you’ll want to you want to let them condition for at least 24 hours if not more we try to go 36 or more and what is conditions so let’s just settle let’s okay that’s like trying to stabilize okay because if you bail them too soon they can skyrocket no they’re they are combustible product it’s like hey they’re two they’re too warm yeah they can get very warm yeah and you want them to cool down you want them to stabilize and that helps with the quality as well so they’re rolling off a room right now that has been up here so it’ll go down into the cooling room for another 24 hours okay what’s pulling it like so this we have this pipe and this kiln cloth it’s like that sits on the floor and if

you look through the cloth right there you can actually see the the holes in the floor i see it yeah so that’s where your heat’s coming that’s where the heat comes through you attach this to this pipe and it turns it and this is non-stop we my first year was 49 days we were in harvest we’re on 30 32 33 that’s pretty good you got one or two more we’re we’re done tonight i think tonight the night shift will be the last picking picking so 32 or 33 this season yeah the day shift will finish drying we’ll be bailing for another four or five days what’s your volume like this here compared to previous years i want your harvesting oh the average per day is quite a bit more because we added that new picker so i would think it’s we gained 40 percent more picking capacity so here so we’re really fishing yeah that’s really really going because that 49-day harvest i think was like at 700 acres we were picking other people and yeah you know because you’d help people are all harvests um oh wow this is crazy which

is bigger than i expected our best view in the house yeah it’s awesome i wasn’t i don’t know what i was expecting but i wasn’t expecting this yeah so they sit here for 36 hours or so 24 to 36. uh depends on how big a push we are in where we’re sitting at probably 40 hours resting time and you got another i mean you got the obviously the conveyor belt storing it out here yeah so that’s coming out and it’s it’s getting it onto that tarp so these these this system is similar to what’s in the in the kiln i see that so it’ll pull them as we go most most cooling rooms and and this this end is used uh they use tractors or skid steers to push it into a conveyor this is rolled off into this a lot cleaner it’s a lot cleaner not you know you’re not contaminating risk risk and contamination with fuel yeah anything like that yeah less people touching that’s the that’s the biggest thing are all hops fire farmers doing all this as far as as far as this tarp system no no everything i’ve looked

at are they doing did some people just grow them and then outsource them yes yeah i figured yeah there’s there’s a few a few that just grow they just don’t but but most will do similar stuff most of them not as dialed in most of them will you know we custom pick and other people will custom pick and there’s some farmers out there that have you know 30 acres or 40 and i’m sure you guys but then you run the risk of not getting your cropping because the farmers are going to take care of their crops oh yeah for sure y’all come gate neighbors in the up industry neighbors will help you though i mean we’re really pretty tight-knit group we’re close but you got even though you’re looking we’re somewhat competitor you’re competitive oh yeah we compete yeah you compete we’re definitely but you’re we but we enjoy the competition yeah you got to have the comments everybody does i mean those the other growers you know i compete with the other farm managers across across the valley and yeah you gotta have some bragging rights and but it’s a lot of

fun man this room’s probably been my favorite so far yeah this is the best view in the house yeah