This summer has produced some unusual events at my house, like the stressed bees I wrote about last week. Another unusual event occurred last Wednesday night when we had a bear in our backyard. Now it is not unusual to have him visit but the timing was way off. You see we normally get a visit from the bear in late September or early October as he or she is passing through heading to wherever his winter den is. But mid-August is very unusual as the camps are still open and the summer homes are all full of people with loads of garbage each week. So why then was the bear in my backyard already, breaking my birdfeeders for some sunflower seed? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to that question, but the first thing we did Thursday morning was get the electric fence back up around the garden yard where my beehive is. Luckily the bear started with the birdfeeders, and he got interrupted when my dog Lily chased after him at one thirty in the morning when I let her out. I usually open the sliding glass door to the patio at the same time as turning on the patio lights which illuminate the whole backyard so Lily could chase the deer that are normally back there. We have some solar lights around the patio so there is always some dim light which would let me see if a skunk was lurking about, but since the bear was black, he just blended in and I didn’t notice anything, but Lily did. As fast as Lily is that bear was faster as she chased him up into the woods. As soon as he was past our rock wall, which is the property line, Lily just turned around and came back to the patio, her job was done. It’s been almost a week now and no signs of the bear visiting again. Hopefully, he won’t even make a cameo appearance this fall.

Another unusual event this summer happens to be a plant that I didn’t mean to plant in my flowerbed that is growing like it is on steroids. It happens to be a hops vine that must have been in the pot of another plant I had brought home and planted a couple of years ago. I noticed it growing last year, but hops need to have a wire or rope to grow up as they grow twenty feet tall in a given year, and I didn’t have time to set that up. The vine dies back to the ground each year and you just cut it off the following spring. This spring I set up a rope system for the hops so that it had something to climb up and climb it did. Last month I noticed it was flowering and now from about ten feet to sixteen feet there are hops formed all around the vine. I have never grown hops before and wasn’t sure when to harvest so I had to do a little investigating. The Cornell Cooperative Extension notes that hops harvest in New York typically runs from mid-August to mid-September, varying by cultivar. Local Hudson Valley growers and sources nearby describe the window as late August into early September. So I will have to keep an eye on my hops to determine when is the best time to harvest. Hops looks like the small cones you would see on a hemlock tree. Ripe cones should feel light, dry, papery, and springy, rebounding after a gentle squeeze. Immature cones feel damp, soft, or squishy and stay compressed. They should leave a sticky yellow residue (lupulin) on your fingers. Smell is another important factor when harvesting hops. Rub a cone between your hands. Ripe hops have a strong, pleasant “hoppy” aroma (often grassy, citrusy, piney, or onion-like depending on variety). Underripe ones smell mild or vegetative; overripe can smell rancid, cheesy, or strongly of garlic/onion. There are a few ways to harvest the hops, but the rope system I have my hops on will allow me to lower the vines down so that I will be able to test the ripeness of the hops before picking them. Some commercial growers cut or just drop the vines to the ground and with mature vines that is just fine, but since my vines are younger, I want them to be able to grow the entire season and, in the fall as the vine dies back, it will send all of the strength of the vine back down to the roots. I’ll cut my vines back in the spring before the new shoots start to come up. Not sure yet what to do with the hops I’m about to harvest as I don’t know which variety they are, as we used to sell ten different hops varieties at the store.