i took this photo on my first trip up to the farm misha's friend erik's family owns.  they grow their hops up there.  it's about 30 minutes away, almost in pennsylvania.  when i took this photo, spring hadn't quite taken hold yet.  the photos below are from when we went up recently to check out the damage to the hop structure.  a neighbor mowing the high grass on the hill accidentally ran over one of the stucture's stays (a concrete block) with the back hoe and it exploded, causing one side of the structure to snap from too much pressure.  luckily the neighbor jerry-rigged it for the time being and the hops are fine, and soon misha and erik will be fixing and re-doing the whole structure.

they're already about 10 feet tall, and you can already see little hop buds!