In my research, I talked with a guy I know about the property. His grandfather (John O'Brien) traded his general store in Eden, WI for the farm (where the hops were dug up) back in 1919, because of fears of a depression after WWI. His grandfather figured, he had grown up in the 19th century without electricity, and that owning some land and a farm would be a good way to ride out any depression. (Interesting side note - later on, John O'brien bought the hardware store back and it morphed in to Flood Oil Co. over time and marriages. It is still there and still in the family, although they are Floods now.)
The guy Mr. O'Brien traded with was a Conrad "Coon" Venhouse (English of some kind, but no info on the surname really). I found his name on the Plat map of 1910 and a record of the transaction in a hardware record book.
(*red dot is the location of wild hops growing on the really old fence row)
On the Plat map of 1893, the property is listed under a Wm. Adams (also English). I haven't found any information about him. I have to find some time to get to the stacks at the library where they have a lot more records in physical forms. There are agricultural sales records from the 1880's that show a couple thousand pounds of hops being produced in Fond du Lac county at that point.
Before I went through the trouble of digging some up and planting them somewhere else, I did a single season trial, where I built a trellis on the fence row. We had a pretty hot and dry year that season and these hops did throw some male flowers and some of the cones had seeds. Since I have had them in the ground at my house and can fertilize, irrigate, and de-stress their lives, I have not seen male flowers since.
I can't really place the variety...need to do more trials, I guess. I figure it's gotta be something like Cluster, but I haven't got any catty notes from these. It may be some old English type. They are smaller cones than new varieties, but have decent lupulin glands and good aroma when you crush them in your hand. They seem to be more delicate after they are dried, too...so don't be too rough with them or the lupulin falls out.
I found them hunting doves one fall afternoon....just walking to my stump down the row a ways...all of a sudden, I stopped dead in my tracks at....THE SMELL OF HOPS ALL AROUND ME!!!! :rockin:
