Welcome! Thanks for your interest in Four Horses hop rhizomes.
Paul Hubble and his wife are a 7th (and now 8th!) generation family farm in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia.
Paul has been growing over 20 varieties of hops on a part-time basis since 2009, first in Ontario, and then on his home farm in Nova Scotia since 2012.
As of 2020, we have gone full-time into farming hops, and vegetables as Button Brook Farm. Visit us at buttonbrookfarm.ca, or on Instagram @buttonbrookfarm.
We are also Certified Naturally Grown!
Our hops brand is a tongue-in-cheek reference to those familiar symbols of the Biblical apocalypse. But more than divine judgement, we’re concerned about immanent threats to a civilization whose way of life can undermine the resources and ecosystems that sustain it.
Our mission, is to be part of an increasingly sustainable way of life, including food and drink production. As far as it depends on us, our longterm goal is to be a little more “apocalypse-proof”: to belong to a community that belongs within the land that sustains it, creating a human niche that we can pass on to future generations.
Our agricultural practises rely on compost, mulch, and cover crops to feed our hungry hops. A sophisticated battery of mulch, tillage, flame-weeding, manual weeding, and cover-cropping normally suffice to keep perennial grasses out of the yard. We continue to be insecticide and fungicide free. Our strings and poles have no preservatives on them, letting wind and weather sometimes have their way.
