Our New Crop Of Beer And Spirits

With an early spring at Rogue Farms in Tygh Valley, this year’s crop of Risk™ malting barley is off to a good start.

After laying dormant during the cold season, the shoots have resumed growing and are nearly three inches tall.

Mt. Hood peeks through an irrigation wheel at Rogue Farms in Tygh Valley, Oregon.

Since we’re surrounded by wildlife, we often get some interesting visitors wandering through the fields.

A deer pauses before leaping over an irrigation line in a field of Risk™ malting barley. Other visitors include Elk and Black Bears.

Some wildlife are not so welcomed. We had unusually heavy geese predation over winter. In this next photo you can see how they wiped out a few acres in our of our barley fields.

In the background, a section of field picked clean by thousands of migrating Canada Geese who descend on our farm in winter.

The geese have moved on, presumably back to Canada. We’ll replant this section in a few weeks.

With warmer and sunnier weather on the way, our Risk™ malting barley will soon grow another couple of feet.  By summer, these fields will be filled with kernels that we’ll harvest, malt, mash, brew and distill for the next round of Rogue beers and spirits.

We can’t say for sure how it will all turn out. All we know is that we’ve done our best to plant our barley in the right combination of good soil and climate – that thing called terroir. But ultimately it’s up the whims of Mother Nature. Taking these risks is way of life here at Rogue, just as it is for farmers everywhere. Come join us at Rogue Farms this spring as we being another season of growing beers, spirits, ciders and sodas.