Native hops ( Lúpulo ) 

humulus lupulus var. neomexicanus

As summer seems to start to fade and warm evenings and mornings become cool we near the end of our hay season. The season we always look forward to and always slightly resent. The end of hay season signals the start of apple and hop picking, among many other things, but two of the things we get the most excited to pick. Both of which have less room for things to go wrong and far less physical demands than making hay. 

Each year, almost as a vacation, we venture south to the spot I have been picking hops at for six years now. It is a valley like our own, but instead of hops here and there, there are seemingly infinite fragrant little neon green flowers, strobiles, sprawling all through the foliage that boarders the spring creek.<...