At the beginning, we were growing corn and wheat to feed their animals. First hop was planted around 1895 and our farm have grown hops ever since. Ivan Rojnik was one of the first farmers who grew hops in Savinjska valley. He first saw hops in the Czech republic where he learnt how to grow hops. First hop fields were not as sophisticated as they are today, each bine was growing on a tiny pole. Th
ey sprayed hops with hand sprayers gardeners use today and spraying solutions were very poisonous. A lot of farmers died due to poisoning over the years and this was a trend up until mid 1980s. Cultivation was done by a horse pulling a cultivator, hop was cut manually and there’s a saying that the first hop fields drank a lot of sweat. During harvest, these poles were torn down so workers from former Yugoslavia could HAND PICK the cones from the plant. Each worker had his own bucket for cones and at the end of the day, the owner of the farm carefully counted buckets and gave each worker “BALETA” which was a sort of coupon with the number of buckets written on it. At the end of harvesting, each worker got paid based on the number of buckets. Funny thing is, a lot of female workers liked to do special work for the owner in the evening for extra BALETAs (that’s coupons) if you know what I mean. Nowadays, things are much more different. Most of the work can be done with tractors, which means that we don’t need much workers anymore. Our farm has one of the most sophisticated equipment for hop production in the world. In 2007, we bought a new hop picker, we have drip irrigation on every field and so on. In early March, fields have to be cultivated. by 20th March, cutting of hops begins. Hop is cut by special tools attached to tractors. after cutting, adding strings to the field is next job. When all is done, we fertilise the fields. In june the hop is sprayed for the first time. Second cultivation is done by the end of june where hops reaches 5m of height. When hops are flowering, it’s time for second spraying. When cones begin to appear, it’s time for the third and last spraying. we have to be very careful with dates, because solutions have withdrawal period. after that, hop harvest begins. we prepare for about a week. Every bearing on every machine is lubricated with food industry approved grease. Every belt is cleaned with care before harvest. The bine loader loads bines to the trailer and then hops are transported from the field to the farm. Bines are put in the hop picker machine and then the separation of the leaves and cones begins. Hops is dried by an dryer powered by oil. However, in front of the dryer there’s another dryer that is fuelled by wood chips. This dryer dries the air that’s going through the oil dryer so it consumes up to 40% of less oil. after the hops are dried to about 6% humidity, they are transported to moisture chamber, where they are moisturised to 11% humidity. This is done because it helps the cones to sustain their form and aroma. Hops is then pressed in to bales. This year, our two farms are building cooling rooms for hops, so it can sustain freshness and aroma for even longer. Our farm grows 100 acres of hops and we plan to expand even further.
