Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
The sprawling farm in Edray, above the fish hatchery, has had a long life serving as a home and farmland for more than a century. It was once a working sheep farm owned by Ivan and Mary Frances Barlow. In 2012, it became a blueberry farm owned by Dan Lewis.
Now, it’s a hops farm, owned by Jim Campbell.
Campbell bought the farm three years ago when he moved from Ansted to Pocahontas County. Originally from southern California, Campbell made a living in the special event industry, building stages and putting on shows across the country.
His former wife’s family is from West Virginia and while the two were on a vacation with her parents, they came across a dilapidated 800 square foot home in Ansted. The For Sale sign in the front yard was quickly uprooted and the two found themselves remodeling the house.
Campbell’s love of real estate and remodeling old houses brought him to Pocahontas County and his current home in Edray near Onoto.
Now that he’s retired from the special event industry, he is focusing on his hobbies.
“One of my hobbyies is fixing up old houses and the other is growing hops,” he said.
He started growing hops eight or nine years ago and has expanded from one row of plants at his place in Ansted, to a large scale operation at Edray.
“Down there, I had a row of about a hundred plants, and I sold them to Free Folk Brewery,” he said. “They made a fresh hop brew out of mine. It takes about two to three years to really get any kind of yield once you put them in the ground, so this year is really my third year up here.”
In 2023, the crop yielded 20 pounds of hops and he sold them to Old Spruce Brewery at Silver Creek, which used them in a small batch brew. Campbell said Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company in Lewisburg has also shown interest in his hops.
Hops are grown in what is known as a rhizome, which is an underground branch structure. In the winter, the branches store up their energy and grow a healthy root system. In the spring, the vines pop out of the ground and grow in a spiral up to 20 feet tall.
“They create these little buds,” Campbell said. “They’re about the size of your thumb. They have what is called lupulin – it’s almost an orange, very sticky substance – that’s the stuff, when you put it in your beer, that gives it the flavor. IPAS and the pale ales have a generous portion of hops in them to get that flavor and bitterness.”
Like most plants, there are a variety of hops and they each have a signature flavor. Some are more bitter than others, and they have a fruity taste to them.
“What I like to do is take a bud and put it in my beer and then suck the beer out around it because you get the pure taste of the hops that way,” Campbell said.
Using a bud like that in its pure form gives a very strong and acquired taste to the beer, and Campbell said the hop can be used multiple times in this way and maintain its flavor.
Usually, hops are harvested in August and either vacuum sealed for freshness to be used later, or pelletized and used immediately in the brewing process.
“The big growers, they have pellet machines,” Campbell said. “You put the whole vine through it and it pulls all the hops off. Then you clean it, let it dry and then you pelletize it. Those pellet packs will last a long time. They look just like the pellets for a pellet stove except they’re green. When you put them in your beer, they dissolve.”
The nice thing about hop plants is that you can clip branches off the vine and plant them. Campbell said he can get up to 30 new plants off of one vine.
“They’re really a weed, almost,” he said. “They take off like crazy. It’s pretty wild.”
In his hop field, Campbell has Cascade, Centennial and Magnum vines. He installed 16 four by fours in the field, spaced out with string running from one to the other. Then, from those strings, there are more strings hanging down for the vines to corkscrew around as they grow.
“You’ve got to train it,” he explained. “You’ve got to put the lines down each year that it climbs and once they’re ready, you’ve got to cut them off, take them and lay them on a tarp or clean area, and pick all the buds off.”
The hops are growing in the former blueberry patch, surrounded by blueberry and blackberry bushes. Well – at least, the bushes the neighboring cattle didn’t get into years ago.
“There were eighteen hundred blueberry bushes at one time,” Campbell said.
Next to the field, in a building Lewis built to process his blueberries, Campbell is putting in a small brewery where he will make his own beer, host parties with friends and enjoy the fruits of his labor.
As a house remodeler, he has been stashing wood and fixtures for the brewery from other projects. He already has a chestnut bar top and salvaged wood and tin for the ceiling, as well as the equipment for a small batch brewery and canning of the beer.
“It’s fun,” Campbell said. “It’s an easy hobby, really. It grows great here. Winters don’t bother hops because they’re underground. You cut them off at the ground, and they pull all their energy into the roots and branch structure. They shoot up like crazy in the spring.”
It may seem like a lot of work to get it going, but being a hop farmer has been a welcome addition to his retirement in the hills.