GLENHOLME - It's cold, though not unreasonably so for mid-December in this part of Nova Scotia, as Evan Price looks across his plowed 'field of dreams' where helpers are erecting long poles.
"In three years, it could be the exact dream field that I'm hoping for," says Price, a Truro resident, fourth-year finance student at Dalhouse University and president of FiddleHop Farms. "By full production we should be getting about five (thousand) to six thousand pounds of hops annually in a harvest."
While Nova Scotia's agricultural initiatives have included a long and varied history of successful crop growth, hops are not among them.
Used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, one of the challenges and, perhaps setbacks, of growing hops is that they take two years to establish a root system after being planted, Price says.
"So you're really not going to make anything for the first couple of years," he says.
Add to that the start-up cost of an average of $10,000 per acre as well as processing challenges and it is little wonder there have been few pioneers in the field.
But Price, 27, is hoping that by combining his experimental hop endeavour with his existing fiddlehead business, he can open up a niche market within Nova Scotia's micro brewry industry and therefore make the initiative both profitable and viable.
"We want to use this as a test case to figure out (if) the market is able to support a commercialized hop industry," he says.
In an effort to reduce some of the risk, Price is bypassing the prospect of selling his future crop on the open market through the establishment of a five-year contract with Garrison Brewing Co. in Halifax.
"This really moves us from experimenting with local hop growing to long-term commercial production, says brewery president Brian Titus. "We're excited to get behind something we strongly believe in."
And, if the effort does prove successful, it will mean that Garrison will not only have local access to its hops, instead of purchasing from overseas or the United States, it will also give the brewery the marketing opportunity of saying they have a homegrown supplier.
"If we can help them grow then they can help us grow ... there's a huge potential for expansion," Price says. "As much as this is like an industry and a business decision to go forward, it's all about achieving strategic partnerships and involving many players. And that's going to mitigate most of the risk."
The poles sticking awkwardly out of the ground, that a team of university volunteers are helping him erect on this day, are to serve as trellises, upon which the growing hops will climb.
"They're much like either green beans or grapes," Price says, of the vine-like fashion in which they grow. Unlike grapes, however, the stalks of the hops are cut to the base each year to start anew from the root system, which should eventually establish itself underground.
On the land space he is currently leasing, Price has seven acres near readiness for his hops and he is partnering with the Nova Scotia Agriculture College, which will be conducting fertilizer studies and also assisting with his processing efforts.
"By full production we'll have about a dozen people working in the season (which runs from June to September)," he says. "A lot of seasonal work opportunity for seasonal students or somebody that's interested in getting into the growing business."
