Wednesday November 22, 2017
Autumn is traditionally a time of hard work, and that is especially true here at FISHBIO. With both fish spawning season and harvest time upon us, we have been busy both out in the rivers counting migrating fish and also in the FISHBIO kitchen pickling, canning, and fermenting the produce from our garden. We have also been growing hops for three years now, and hop harvest time has become festive affair. The mature hop vines that have been tended in our garden all summer are cut down and spread across our large conference table for an “all-hands” type of processing. We pick the hop flowers off of the vines and dry them to add during the fermenting process of beer brewing, which gives aroma and flavor to our handcrafted beer. We grow several varieties of hops to use in our beer making, each lending unique qualities to our brews. Our home-grown and home-made goodies turn into gifts for our client Christmas baskets or get taken home by our employees to enjoy with their families.
While the fall season can sometimes seem drab and dreary out in our garden, as many of our once-colorful summer crops are taken down and our trees are left leafless, we like to remember that fall is what will make the springtime fruitful again next year. As the salmon in our rivers come upstream to spawn and die during this time of changing seasons, they become the nutrients that fertilize a healthy habitat for their offspring to survive. Likewise, the leftover stems and leaves from our garden are added to our compost pile to fertilize our next batch of crops. So, as we reap what has been sown, we will also give back and help the next generation be reborn from this one. Then we will take some time to celebrate the holidays and enjoy the bountiful harvest of this season.