John Annen Oral History Interview, February 10, 2016

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Okay. It is February 10, 2016 and we are in Mt. Angel, Oregon, with John Annen. We will be doing an oral history today.

JOHN ANNEN: Marvelous.

TEM: Thank you. I'm going to scoot over just a little bit so we're looking more towards the camera and I can look. So, tell me how long your family has been growing hops.

JA: Our family came to Mt. Angel in 1894-96. Somewhere in there. There was some controversy over when it was and records weren't real good and they came here to this farm. They were in Minnesota, I think, or Wisconsin. Back there somewhere. 00:01:00They came out here when the priest came to the abbey. The sisters came to the convent. Priests came to the abbey. So, they followed them out and came out this way. Great grandpa originally bought this farm. It was 80 acres. It was just a small homestead out front and a little bit of this area right here was cleared. The rest of it was just scrub like the whole valley was in those days. So, he didn't have much money then. So, he offered the guy that owned the property his team of horses as down payment and the guy that he bought it from was Great Grandpa Tweed that lived down in Monitor that had the John Deere dealership eventually down there, but anyway Grandpa Tweed said, well, Henry was his name, 00:02:00everybody called him Paul, so it's hard to remember. But he said well Paul, I'll take your horses but how are you going to farm the farm and I won't get the rest of my money. He said, well okay, so he believed in him and he said you do it and come Fall we'll straighten up. So, they did and that's how they did it and that's how we got started.

TEM: So, it started with 80 acres?

JA: 80 acres. Then over time bought a little here, a little bit there. This farm is 120 [acres] now. Then there's 160 [acres] down where I live and there's about 100 [acres] down by the river and another 80 [acres] toward Woodburn.

TEM: Why did they? Were they Catholic and so they were following the church?

JA: Yeah. Very Catholic. Extremely Catholic. That was part of the thing to come out here. In those days, all of the first settlers of Mt. Angel were all the Catholic people that came from mostly back in the Midwest.

TEM: Where were they before Wisconsin?

JA: Germany.

TEM: Germany.

JA: Came from Germany. I don't know and then that's again why I'd love to have chatted more with Great Auntie. She would know all this stuff. Why they stopped there in Wisconsin or Minnesota or wherever it was, I don't know. But that's where they were and then they came out here, so.

TEM: Were they farmers in Germany?

JA: Yes. They were always farmers.

TEM: They were always farmers, always hop farmers?

JA: Always had hops, not necessarily probably the hop farmers [air quotes] because in those days everybody had a few hops, you know, everybody probably made their own beer I would assume. Paul brought the hops with him out here. They all had them. In those days, way back, everybody had up to an acre. There was just hops everywhere in this valley. It wasn't until the... I guess the big point was after the Second World War. When the Second World War was done that's when they came out with the first stationary picking machines. We got the second 00:04:00one in Oregon. The first one went to the abbey. Floyd Dauenhauer the guy that invented them or brought them together. Floyd was a devout Catholic and he was very much involved with the abbey, so the abbey got the very first stationary picker and we got the second one. It was about that time, that was the early '50s when people, by the end of the '50s, the latter part of the '50s people either made up their mind whether to be hop farmers or not. The guys that stayed in bought picking machines and dryers and all that. The other guy just got out. There was a time, and I don't remember, you could probably look it up somewhere, but it was in the later '50s when the price hops went to almost nothing. The old timers say you couldn't give them away. That's when a lot of the guys got out, the guys with just little acreages. The guys that stayed in invested in pickers and got bigger and that's kind of how it got to be where it got today.

TEM: Back, say, late 1800s, was it common, then, to have farms that just grew 00:05:00essentially everything that you would want to grow?

JA: Everything. yes. In those days around here everybody, the farms were much smaller than they are today, obviously, there was a lot more of them and everybody had a big garden, would grow stuff that they could easily transfer to cash: wheat, vegetables, whatever. Then everybody had a couple pigs and a cow. A cow for milk a couple of pigs to eat up all the stuff and then of course to eat them and to sell them and some chickens and all that. So, you were real self-sufficient, basically. Then the crops were just so you had cash.

TEM: How would hops be sold back then when it was the much smaller harvest?

JA: There was a warehouse. I'm not real good at this. Somebody like Rosalie [Weathers] would know way more than me, but it's my understanding back in the 00:06:00old days there was a warehouse in Mt. Angel. It's gone not long ago. It's right where the doctor's office is, across the street there, there's a brand-new plumbing place or something there. In that strip of land by the railroad there. There's a warehouse there and everybody brought their hops into there. In those days, there were quite a few hop houses around because they'd use them for hop houses and I think they did some prune drying and stuff in them too. But not everybody who grew hops had a hop house. There was more like a communal thing, so they'd go on a wagon or an old truck or something from the hop house into town and then they'd store them in there in the warehouse and then they'd store them in there in the warehouse and then they'd get on the railcars to get out to wherever they're going to get sold. Tony Weathers, or one of those guys, would know more of the sales/buying end from their grandpa because he was a big hop dealer.

TEM: So, did your family, has your family always farmed hops primarily? Has that 00:07:00been your main crop?

JA: Yes.

TEM: And, you mentioned four different places. Were those farmed by different members of your family or did your kind of all communally farm them?

JA: Yeah, it was like a big commune. There were my dad and six brothers. So, it was a big family and four sisters. So, everybody did their part. Some of the boys died early. Dad died kind of middle-early. Then one of the brothers, Eddie, left and got down to just basically myself and my brother and our uncle Joe were 00:08:00the ones that ended up running it. My brother left in the early '90s. So it was always me.

TEM: What was it like for the people who left? Was there an expectation that people would stick in the business or what was the--?

JA: Yes. It was a big expectation that you would stay and it was for the good of the whole and there was just so many mouths to feed and I wasn't there, I don't know, but I would guess strongly that when some of the brothers got married, some didn't, the ones that got married are the ones that left. So, I'm thinking their wives had things to do with it and "why are you doing all the work and we're not getting anything more than anybody else?" You know how that whole dynamic gets going. If you're going to work this hard you might as well be working for us, for us together and not for everybody.

TEM: Did they stay in farming?

JA: Yes. One of my uncles that left, Eddie, stayed in farming and then he also was a tractor salesman for John Deere on the side and as he got older he did a lot less farming and a lot more tractor sales and so he did that for years and years and years and years. Then he finally passed away here 10 years ago but he was like 78 or something, so.

TEM: I've dominated the beginning part. Did you have questions about?

NANCY SITES: No, you're fine. No, I'm just listening.

TEM: So, I'm curious about the relationship between the farming that was happening around the abbey and the commercial farming. Was there any... how did you all work together?

JA: In the day, the abbey was the biggest farm around here. They had the most 00:10:00farm ground. Almost all the ground around the base of the abbey belongs to the abbey. In the day, in its day, the abbey did all of its own farming. They were a major hop farmer. They had one of the finest milking dairy herds in the country. They had a hog farm. They had vegetables. They had vast tracks of forest holdings up in the hills. They were totally self-sufficient. They just, you know, I don't know didn't get enough guys or enough brothers to do it all. I think the tax things changed on them. that, they, you know if you're a non-profit I don't think you're' suppose to be running a major agriculture enterprise. I don't know, but...

TEM: Did they sell as well, or was it? Did they need cash to support? That was 00:11:00how they sold their goods?

JA: Yep. That's how they helped support the abbey. Then up at the kitchen one of my aunties worked up there for years and years and years and years. Every summer or fall they would can all their own stuff for the whole year for everybody up there, so canning green beans for days. Then the animals from the hog farm and the dairy would supply the meat. They were totally, totally self-sufficient at one time up there.

TEM: Did they make their own beer and wine?

JA: I'm sure they did. I'm sure they had their own hooch too, you know.

TEM: Were they employing people to help with harvesting from the community?

JA: Oh yes. Oh yeah. I know the Sprower family, most of them all worked there 00:12:00and then they hired most, well, let's see... when they had the high school up there, the academy or whatever they called it, all those kids worked on the hop farm. The high school kids. Part of their tuition, probably I'm guessing. I wasn't there but that's what I would guess. Way back in the old days before we had the Hispanic workers there was Okies and Arkies that came through and they hired them too as well, I would assume. We all did.

TEM: Was there the same sort-of demand for migrant labor before World War II that there was north of me and Independence and Monmouth, was there the same sort of camp flood?

JA: Yeah. It was more of a camp thing where like a tent city kind of a thing. Yeah, Independence in the early days when it was the hop growing capital there 00:13:00was literally tent cities up there. People would come up river on barges from Portland and Salem or wherever and stay for the harvest and have a big party and go home. There was a lot of that here for a while, more over towards St. Paul, I think, though. I don't really remember it, but I'm only 58. I know there was a lot of years here, we had an old school bus here. Every morning either Margie, my aunt, or one of my uncles would jump in it and leave here at like 3:00, 3:30 in the morning and go up to Burnside and pick up the bums.

TEM: Oh, up in Portland?

JA: Up in Portland. Fill the bus full of bums and bring them down here for stringing and training and what-not and obviously bring them back every night. There was some stories to go with that too.

TEM: I bet!

JA: I think Dad got in trouble for... he would buy a bunch of wine, Mad Dog, 00:14:00some fortified wine, put it in the back of the bus. That got them on the bus. A certain select few-as he would explain to me-a certain select few of them you'd have to put a bottle after so many hills to keep them going down the row. They'd know they'd get their bottle then at the end. And then give them a jug on the way home or whatever. That went on for a few years. How many? Probably 10, maybe, I don't know. I was very, very young or if at all here then in those days. I can remember when the Arkies and the Okies were here and of course when the Hispanic people came.

TEM: So, what was-so, talk about the first group first. Were they actually coming across the country?

JA: The Arkies and the Okies? Yeah. They had their own little wagon train, I guess. In cars, all cars and trucks and stuff. They had a circuit they would do. 00:15:00They would leave from home and go through California. Early on in the spring there's all this lettuce and there's all this stuff to do in California. Oranges I think now this time of year oranges are ripe. Then they'd just work their way up and end up in Yakima for apples and then once that was done pretty much then they'd head back or some of them didn't. They hung around.

TEM: How many people? Like, what was the--?

JA: Oh, there would be, like for us we'd use as many as 35, maybe 50 if they were getting behind. So, there must have been a bunch of them around, you know, because there's quite a few hop farms around. Then the hop farmers had their own little network going that we got this bunch and we'll be done on Tuesday, or whatever, and then they'd go, well, come over here. We're ready. So, people worked that way to use the force that was there the best they could.

TEM: Where did they stay?

JA: In their cars and pickups and their trucks and tents, along the river.

TEM: It was a much less organized camp atmosphere but people were still camping out?

JA: Still camping, but not like the old days where they had a tent city. It was just, like every hop farmers got a river bottom somewhere and there's a light spot somewhere and two, three cars pull in.

TEM: Were they whole families?

JA: Not so much a bunch of kids that I remember. It was older married couples or like say 40-year-old plus men, like brother-in-laws or brothers and brother-in-laws and uncles and cousins or whatever. I don't ever remember it being kids but maybe the kids were at home in the camp. I don't know.

TEM: But no kids picking in the fields like it used to be?

JA: No.

TEM: So, this would have been the late '50s?

JA: Before the war, '30s, '40s.

TEM: Oh, okay.

JA: After the war, it wasn't long after the war when the Spanish people started coming. Late '50s early '60s the Spanish people were here.

TEM: What was that transition like? At what point did the people from the southeast, the mid-south, how did they, when did they stop coming?

JA: I can't. I wasn't around that much then. Maybe Rosalie [Weathers] and stuff would have a better idea on that, but I think the Spanish people started coming through, they originally had a program with the government called the Bracero program. I think that's what started it. The folks figured out they could do it but not necessarily jump through the hoops either. That's when the immigration stuff started and they'd come up.

TEM: And then there was the Colegio up on Mt. Angel. Was there a kind of, was there a permanent settlement or were people always migrant, so coming up for harvest and then going back?

JA: For the most part. The guys that were the hardest working guys that really wanted to just come up, work and make some money and go home. That was the big thing. Sometimes the sedentary ones weren't here so much to work as just to get some free living, free handout stuff and didn't want to work so much. It was a lot easier just to camp out and get your meals and stuff and work once in a while. But the guys that wanted to work, worked very hard. They wanted to work. 00:19:00they would save every penny and they went home.

TEM: Were they doing the same temporary housing, camping, or were there permanent housing facilities?

JA: There was a lot of the bigger hops farmers had camps they called them, like a, it's like a super simple motel looking thing. Like a block building. At the intersection of Dominic Road and Highway 214, you'll see on the northwest corner of that intersection. I think it's kind of a bluish gray color, it's like an L-shaped building, that was originally built back in probably the late '50s, early '60s as migrant housing and it's been there ever since.

TEM: Is it still apartment, I mean is it still housing?

JA: It's still some kind of housing, yeah. Some of its got people, some of it I 00:20:00think was getting renovated or only part of it or something. I know there was the whole one end of it was empty all winter, but I know the Colemans over there had a big camp. I don't know if Weathers ever did or not. I know Don was talking about doing it and had plans for one and stuff, but I don't know if they ever did it. In the early '60s, middle '60s, the migrant people that were coming up here were grateful to live in a chicken coop, as bad as it sounds, because down there where they were from in Mexico they were lucky to have a cardboard box. You know? Or a piece of corrugated metal and a pallet. You know what I mean? It was terrible down there. I mean, I'm not condoning it. They were just happy to have whatever they could have when they got here.

TEM: Backing up chronologically. Back to the pre-war, pre-war maybe, I don't know early 1900s, which is really pre-war.

JA: That's really pre-war.

TEM: I was going to transition to like Prohibition and growing during the wars, but I think I backed up too far.

JA: Prohibition I don't know a whole lot about. I know that we grew hops all through Prohibition. I know there was hops used for different stuff. They made Near beer. Europe still brewed beer and they needed stuff. Not much was talked about around here about Prohibition. Gramps, my grandfather, was a moonshiner. Most, if not all, of the payments on a lot of things got made with moonshine 00:22:00money. He was one of the, from what I hear in the country, he was one of the best in the business. So, people sought him out, or sought his product out. So, I know that for a while he worked with the county or for the county, or something as a road boss, he would maintain, in those days, all the gravel roads. I think those were the days they had the convicts or stuff doing it, or people who were kind of down and out looking for something to do, they had a road crew that would do the gravel road. Gramps was supposed to have been some kind of road boss on that deal to help make ends meet around here.

TEM: What was the oversight for things like moonshine, brewing your own stuff?

JA: Well, with moonshine business if you had a name people sought you out. It was a little bit dangerous in that word got out too far. Gallonhouse Bridge is 00:23:00named Gallonhouse Bridge, it's over here between Middleton and Silverton, because that's where you brought your gallon of shine and left it by the foot of the bridge by the tree or the can or whatever and then somebody would leave the $5 or whatever it was. That's how it got its name. Because Mt. Angel was always a bunch of Catholics and Mt. Angel was wet and Silverton was not so much Catholic and they were dry. So all the good old boys from Silverton would come out to the Gallonhouse Bridge and pick up their shine.

TEM: I feel like that's a very, very common in Oregon, having...

NS: I was going to say, that sounds like Monmouth and Independence.

JA: Yeah, exactly.

TEM: Or Corvallis and Albany or Eugene and Springfield.

JA: Yeah. Name any two, yeah, same thing. Gramps would make, as kids we would be out with him we'd have to pick dandelions, or we'd have to go with him up in the hills and get elderberries or whatever and he'd make wine. And if a batch of 00:24:00wine didn't turn out the way he wanted it he'd run it through the coils and make brandy I guess or whatever. He was good at making corn liquor, shine, and the girls would just, my aunts, the girls would just get livid with him because he would take the "best" cast iron pan, they had one that had a nickel coating on it or something, and he would burn sugar in there and then you'd add that to the shine to give it color, because shine off the coils is as clear as a bell, right? So, you burn up a little sugar and put a little of that, it's like caramel I guess, you'd put a little bit of that with it and it'd get this beautiful amber color to it. Well, he would just muck up the pan and it'd be time to run a batch and he'd go into the root cellar down in the basement or wherever, and the girls would have very carefully bought sugar when it was on 00:25:00sale and blah, blah, blah you know. Gramps would use all the sugar in that batch. So, it'd be time to make jam or canning and all the sugar would be gone. So, you'd hear that once in a while.

TEM: They should add some of the, add the liquor back into it. Did you guys ever grow wine grapes? Was that ever--?

JA: No. Now, Gramps had a little row, kind of a little thing. They were more for eating than they were for wine. I don't know where he got all his grapes and stuff. Like I say, he made wine out of everything. Dandelions, elderberries. You name it. He made it.

TEM: Was it good?

JA: It was very good. When we were kids our payment [air quotes] for picking dandelions would be a little container of dandelion wine. In those days Alka-Seltzer came in a round bottle as big as an Alka-Seltzer tablet and about 00:26:00this long [holds up hands]. So, he'd fill those up with wine and each kid would get one. All the girls all liked it because the kids were all very quiet and taking a nap most of the afternoon.

TEM: So, they hadn't discovered the missing sugar yet?

JA: Yeah. They hadn't seen the missing sugar.

TEM: How close, like, distance-wise were the members of your family? Were you guys all within walking distance of each other?

JA: Yeah. This was what we called the home place and Gramps and the girls lived here. They were all maidens and aunts. There was three sisters lived here and one uncle lived here. And Uncle Eddie lived about 1 mile to the north. My dad and all of us grew up about a mile ½ to the east, and uncle Joe lived on the other place and he was like, what, 3 miles. As the crow flies, 3 miles to the 00:27:00south. So everybody was less than 5 miles apart.

TEM: What about the size of Mt. Angel and Silverton? Were they big towns? Mini-cities? Were they about the same size that they are now?

JA: They had the same footprint. Just that the storefronts were different. Mt. Angel had everything you could ever want or need. There was the drug store, the hardware store, the Wilco type thing, the farm store. The only time you ever went to Portland was if you brought a load of lambs or pigs or something up to the stockyard. Otherwise, there's no need to go to Portland.

TEM: How many cousins did you have? With that many...

JA: Well, Eddie got married and he had 6 kids. There's 7 kids in our family and then Josie never had any kids and Flav [Flavius Annen] died young and the girls never got married and Thomas never got married. So, there was only the two tribes of kids. We were, our family was a lot closer tied-in because Dad was the one that was running it more. So, Eddie's the one that left, in the middle '60s I think is when he left.

TEM: So, what was it like to grow up-I mean, did you guys have a sense that hops were a special thing and they were used for beer? Was that part of like the work that you did?

JA: It was very much ingrained into us that hops were a very special thing that 00:29:00hops paid all the bills. Not so much that they made beer. We didn't think that far down the road. It was just hops and hops paid all the bills. We didn't have vast acreages compared to a lot of people, but it was a think you take care of those hops and they'll take care of you. Of course, there was lots of us to do all the work, so less people you had to hire.

TEM: That had to be, though, if you are obviously reliant on a crop that can be pesky and disease-ridden what did you do or what did the farm do when downy mildew came in the '30s. obviously, you weren't here, but...?

JA: I wasn't here but the stories were a lot of the varieties got changed. Then this would've been in the early '40s there's a little tiny airport out by 00:30:00Whiskey Hill, Lenhardt Airpark. I think it's still on the map. Jack Lenhardt had a little like a piper cub, or something, some little tiny airplane, and he would fly on dust in those days. That's all there was, it was a zinc-based dust. Then there was a company in Silverton, it was where the post office is now. It was called Byberg Industries, or something like that. It was Byberg Shop. He made a hop duster. It was basically just a round metal tub with an agitator thing on there and two big fans off to the side and you'd just turn it on with your tractor with the PTO and it'd be like a leaf blower with a snout on each side and this tub of dust and you'd just go flying through the hop yard between 4:00 and 5:30 in the morning. You'd have to wait until the dew comes on so the dust 00:31:00sticks and then once the sun came up you're pretty much done because either the wind starts blowing or the dew is gone, so you had to go like mad for an hour and a half to three hours every morning until you got dust on everything. They would, after they hand hoed them in the spring, they'd have the hill there ready to go, they would take a gunny sack and fill it full of the same dust and then you'd just walk along and you'd go poof on top of the hill and just make the dust go on top of the hill so as the hops grew up they'd have all the dust all over them. That helped a little but basically it was just changing the varieties.

TEM: Then, I guess, thinking about as you head into mechanization, did that have an impact on disease prevention? Did that ever--?

JA: There was a time in the late '50s, early '60s when chemicals took care of a 00:32:00lot of things. in looking back, it was the wrong kind of chemicals. What we had. That took care of a lot of. There was no more problem with bugs. There wasn't any mites, there were no small infants, no children, no birds, or nothing [laughs]. We used to look forward to the Fourth of July because that's when they put the sistocks [?] on, they'd put them on with an airplane. You had to stay out of the hop yards for 24 hours. It would clean up everything, but to the point where they'd be dead birds at the end of the field where the little puddles were where they not only took a drink or took a bath or the last thing they ever took was in that puddle. It was that bad. But, again, to look back and say, it's always easy to look back and say what you should've done. Had they 00:33:00been a little softer chemicals, yeah, it probably would've been a little better. It was the '60s, early '60s, late '50s and it was chemicals are the thing. I guess we lived through it. No problems yet.

TEM: It's pretty amazing when you look at The Hopper, the Oregon Hop Grower, the magazines that you see these chemicals are your friend, this is the salvation. It's very, I can imagine being a farmer at that time. It would be really enticing.

JA: If you were grandpa and you fought through the mildew days and all you had to fight mildew with was a little bit of dust and picking spikes and fighting it and hoping to God that it would dry out enough to slow it down and all of a sudden, this guy came and said you spread this on and all your problems are gone. That's pretty...you know.

TEM: Yeah. So what was the kind of the hop community like? I know that there 00:34:00were different growers' associations before the one that is now. What were, so, again heading back in time a little bit. What was the community like? How did the farming community come together to, I don't know, brainstorm, strategize, deal?

JA: We'll go back to when everybody had a few hops and there wasn't any hop commission or anything yet. It was just a bunch of guys that would, I mean, I don't know talk over a beer or meet on the corner or something. Everybody had a few, you know? And then when the hop industry consolidated after the war and those that were going to be in the hop business were going to be in the hop business and the farms got bigger, that's when they got the commission going and the growers' association so that everybody could share what they were learning. 00:35:00Hops were a valuable community that was way too much invested and way too much to afford to lose, so everybody got together to help each other you know? Because it was such a high-value product.

TEM: What about that transition in the '50s to mechanization? Can you talk about how people would share equipment? Was that something that was common?

JA: What we did as far as I know and from what I know from around here is we went out, Annen Brothers went out on a limb and bought the machine. Then we only had x amount of days that we needed to pick our crop. Then our machine was available from this day to this day. They ran it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Basically the guys in the neighborhood would just come around say, I've got 5 acres of this or 3 acres of that or 4 acres of this or 2 acres of that or whatever. You just get on the list. Then it was like a custom hire thing where 00:36:00they just paid a fee per pound, then we picked them and dried them and baled them and then there was a fee paid at the end.

TEM: Was there a point where people who wanted to grow more hops so they had 5, 6 acres they really wanted to have a larger farm, either move to Yakima or move to Idaho was that kind of like migration?

JA: I don't know. That's not, they never really talked about that. I never got schooled in. I know that they always call them the Frenchmen up there in Yakima. Some of those guys I think got started in the 1880s, '90s up in there. I don't really have much. I don't know much about the history of how that went. I know that there was a farmer here in Silverton, he was from Silverton, went to Hermiston and got a hop farm going there. That was in the late '60s I think. 00:37:00Same climate as Yakima but still in Oregon. I don't know how he, he finally quit. I don't know if he did very well or not. There was a lot of stuff against him there: the weather, the wind, particularly. Get everything trained, the next day it'd blow it off and have to string again. For labor there was no migrant labor around there. Probably Hood River during apple season, but that doesn't coincide with hop season at all, so I don't really know what ever happened there. I know there was a good size farm there though at one time. And then Idaho... Goodings were originally from here. If you could find anybody to talk to from the Gooding people, or maybe the Weathers would know. Because the Goodings originally were from here, from Oregon, and then they went to Idaho.

TEM: I think now we obviously, the farms are so much larger and well-established, that people who are hop farmers are...

JA: Yeah, it's the same little families. It's the same little families, they marry back and forth. Don't ever cross a hop farmer.

TEM: Well, what was that like this being the life that you were going to lead? What was, was there a point where you ever thought that this isn't what I want to do?

JA: No. I never knew anything else. I grew up, well, we worked here you know all, I started driving tractor when I was 5 and then you know every free minute we were out working doing something. Mom had 7 kids, get at least half of them out of the house, go to work somewhere. I went off to college after I got done with high school and I went fall term and anyway I came home for spring vacation 00:39:00on my first year of school and the guy that was working here as their mechanic and kind of head guy all of a sudden came up to the aunties and Uncle Joe and said you know you guys have been awful good to me and fed me all winter and all that but I got to tell you I'm leaving. His girlfriend was a bartender in town at the hotel or somewhere and he got this mad passionate thing for this gal and she was moving to Montana or somewhere and so... he was here for his check on Friday and said I'm gone tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest we're leaving. Uncle Joe said, I was just getting done with Spring Break and he said, well Johnny boy, it seems that Al's leaving I guess you're going to have to stick around. I said, well, I'm kind of in the middle of school. He said, you can always go back. We'll find somebody you know. That was 40 years ago. That was 40 years ago next month. I never knew anything else, so.

I have 2 boys. Dominic, my older son, has no interest in farming but Chase, our younger son, has an interest in farming, so I talked to him one day and I said, you think this is alright? He said, well, yeah. Because he'd help me ever since he was a little kid he'd be out in the shop with me or somewhere and then through high school he'd help after school and what not. In the summers he and Dominic would work here and Chase went to college down at Oregon State and he was going to be an engineer or something. He helped me one summer. Sophomore summer he helped me real close he and I worked together with the drip tubes and the fertilizer and all that stuff and he was just amazed at how you could add water and fertilizer and today and tomorrow things would look different. Kind of caught a bug with him and he changed his major to plant pathology, biology, pathology something. I don't know. So, a couple years later he graduated and he 00:41:00worked for Dr. Dave [David Gent] for a year and he came back to work and he seemed to like it. He's very intelligent. He does very well. My doc told me, she said, you in a place to retire. I said, yeah, probably, I don't know. She goes, well, if you can retire, I think it'd be a good idea. So, I talked to Chase and I said, he's only 27 at the time, and I said, I know this is kind of a lot for being 27. He just got married. Baby was on the way in those days. Then I said, but the doc says I should probably take it easy what do you think? He says, if that's what it is, that's what it is. Officially, for all the official business, I retired on the 1st of the year, and so it's his baby now.

TEM: So you're retired now?

JA: I'm retired. I got my 40 years in. I'm alright so. with all my back time off and all that sick leave, I guess if you count all that I get a free ride from 00:42:00the 1st of January to the 15th of March and then I got my 40 years and I'm done.

TEM: Now you can go back to school.

JA: Well, actually I found the library to be a wonderful place to hang out because as I was growing up out here and trying to run this place there was aunties and uncles and elders under foot and made it at times somewhat difficult. So, I told Chase, I said, I grew up with this I know exactly what not to do. I'm around if he needs me. I told him if he needs somebody to move a tractor or pick somebody up or go get parts or babysit. I come in the morning and make coffee for the guys and I'm the morale officer [air quotes]. That kind of stuff. Other than that, I'm just going to be out of the way. I like the library in Mt. Angel. There's a lot of stuff. I kind of squeaked through high 00:43:00school. Worked more than I went to school and then college I didn't do much there, had to come home and work. All this learning is all new to me. I'm 58 years old and like a freshman in high school again. It's fun going to the library.

TEM: When did you take over running...?

JA: Management? 1993. My brother left in '92, '92/'93. He was a year younger than I, or a little over a year younger than I. He went to Oregon State and got his degree and all that and he just couldn't get along with the aunties and just didn't care for farming, I think. I don't know. It was kind of a personality thing. It fell down to me as the last Mohican left. As the older kid, so. All my brothers and sisters went to college and got degrees and real jobs. So, I was 00:44:00just left here.

TEM: You were here during a very interesting time for both farming but also the business that you supply the product for.

JA: Oh yes.

TEM: Those transition times.

JA: It was a lot of fun. We would sell a lot. When Anheuser-Busch came in with their direct contracts and part of that and got out of that and went into the craft brew world. That was in the late '80s, we got to talking with a guy up in Yakima and he said you know this craft beer stuff is going to be something someday. He said these guys are good guys. They're going to make it. He said people are really going to enjoy their stuff. He says if you're smart you'll get in on the ground floor with those guys. We planted our first hops right around '90 I think, '89/'90.

Then after Jerry left we went in a little heavier. We planted some of the original hops for, what were they? They were pearls for the guys at the coast, Rogue, for their dead guy ale. We planted, I can't remember what it was for down south, Sierra Nevada. We planted hops for them. Then a bunch of the guys in Portland, mostly. It was interesting and found out those guys, the craft brew guys really appreciate what we did. They'd come out and just, God we're just so grateful. You guys do a great job and blah, blah, blah. As we went with our friends at Anheuser-Busch they kind of got less and less friendly all the time, demanded more and more and paid less and less. Then when InBev took over, I 00:46:00felt, personally I felt that we were no more than a pad on a disk in a rolodex. All the people that I knew at Anheuser-Busch were gone. They retired them or I guess, retired them [air quotes] is what they said. But they're all gone, man. Nobody, nobody had any institutional knowledge of the hop business. I think it was a bunch of accountants, I guess, I don't know. they considered hops no different than labels or caps or bottles or whatever and they never saw, they didn't know the hop business. The hop business would be good one year and very lean the next. It's an agricultural commodity and that's why Mr. Busch always had 2 years' worth of hops in his warehouses somewhere. He wasn't going to get caught short. Once he left and the whole thing, it just... so we sold our contracts back and went all into craft brew stuff. That's what we do now up to today.

TEM: In the earlier days contracting with Anheuser-Busch were they asking for certain varieties? Were they encouraging experimentation?

JA: Anhauser-Busch was big on Willamette and they had a specific number of pounds they wanted. They also were the most generous, I guess, with everything to do with experimentation. HRC and all that stuff. They were huge experimenters there.

NS: Big experimental plots.

JA: Big experimental plots. They'd do them with the... originally they did them kind of on their own. Then they decided this ain't working. We're all here in this together. Then they went and they did it closely with the HRC. Because we grew, oh man, 5, 6 different kinds for them over the years. An acre of this and an acre of that. To see how it would grow. See what it would do. We were kind of geared up for it because a lot of the farms had 2, 3, maybe 3, maybe 4 different varieties. Usually 2 or 3. We'd have 8 to 10. We were forever changing. My guys that worked for me they thought that's what hop picking was. These other guys they'd come they'd pick the early ones, they'd pick the middle ones for two weeks. Then the other one for two weeks. We're picking a hop a day sometimes 00:48:00around here, sometimes two in one day. It was no big deal for us. So, we'd do a lot of the experimental stuff just because it was small batch stuff and we could get it through but handle it like a commercial farm.

TEM: When did that start to... is it fair to say that that changed sort of overnight with the sale to InBev, was that...?

JA: Well, yeah, that'd be a good way to put it: overnight. It was like yeah, they were. Yeah when AB, when Augie was in charge and AB was AB they were huge supporters. They were big on experiments.

NS: They had Busch Ag resources, right? That was a whole separate...?

JA: Yeah. The whole separate company of them that was Daryl and all those guys that worked for them. They were in charge of all the experiments and all that stuff. They were huge in it. They put a lot of money into this hop industry. Yeah, pretty much when they bought out it was boom [snaps fingers]. They went in. I was not back there, but I heard in St. Louis that there was this "fifth" floor, there was this magic floor where all these vice presidents were in these "nice little offices." I guess they went through the "fifth floor" and just cleaned it out and took all the walls down and it's a big massive opening with these little cubicle cone things.

NS: I saw it when I was there. They did. Yeah.

JA: I would hope that Augie's office was left alone.

NS: Oh, yeah it is.

JA: It's like a shrine.

NS: It's a little building thing, yeah.

JA: All those guys, all those senior vice presidents and stuff over the side. That was...

NS: And their farm too, Bonners Ferry [Idaho] that kind of went by the lake. That used to be huge too.

JA: That used to be... yeah, Bush-Ag resources ran a lot of experiments on their own farm up in North Idaho. They got that farm in an anti-trust thing. It was a legal action. Standard used to own but Achiever Busch ended up with it. Was 2,300 acres, 2,500 acres of till-able land.

NS: Oh yeah, that's big.

JA: Then I think they were down to 600 [acres], somebody said. It was not very much what they're left with up there and I guess the guys that run it kind of got the word that you got to make it on your own. We're not supporting this thing anymore. It used to be their experimental play station thing and they had an air strip there. You'd fly in and they'd have this jeep polished up and ready to go and all that. No more.

TEM: Do they still own the land?

NS: They do. So, they told them that they when they took a bunch of hops out they said they sold their hops back. A whole bunch of people. A whole bunch of growers did that. They also took a whole bunch of hops out in Idaho and they'd plant it. They were planting whatever they could under the trellis to make money. They planted like canola and they were planting all kinds of stuff because they said we don't need any more hops. Take them out. Put something in that's going to make money. They still do own it and now they put more hops up there now that they're coming back and they're buying all these craft breweries. They're doing more and more of that. But there was a few years there, right after I started here that they told the guys we're going to stop hops.

JA: With those guys from the craft brew I heard a little bit. I'm not going to 00:52:00mention any names because it's not for me to say. But it is my understanding that once AB buys into a craft brewer they don't necessarily have a lot of choice of where they get their hops anymore.

TEM: Oh.

JA: AB just tells them, oh we'll take care of that for you. We've got this, this, and this and you'll make it work.

NS: I've seen that.

JA: Whether, I don't know that. It would be very unwise in my opinion to mess with somebody's recipe if they're extremely successful like Goose Island or one of these guys. But, you know, I don't know. You know how big corporations work. it's not always for the best. You know? It's generally for the betterment of a few people and not generally everybody. Just the shareholder or the CEO or what I don't know.

TEM: How did those relationship with craft brewers. How are they established? Did people come and say...?

JA: Basically through... the main one that we dealt with anyway was Mr. Ralph Olson. He was a salesman with several different hop companies through his career up in Yakama. These craft guys got to know Ralph because Ralph was one of the 00:53:00first guys in the sales end of thing to ever go to the early craft brew functions and so these guys were looking for hops and they can't find anything because nobody wants to deal with them because they're relatively small. Ralph believed in them. I guess he liked the beer, or something I don't know, but he would always say these guys are going to be something. I'm telling you, get on board with these guys. So he was their biggest champion. When he came and talked to us we planted hops for him, certain varieties they just wasn't around until, I mean they're at the college, we went down to have roots at the dock, but they weren't commercially available. Ralph did a huge service to the craft guys by getting them started and listening to what they wanted and they all decided they wanted this, this, and this and Ralph said it's good but try to keep it down to 00:54:00two or three to get started here.

NS: Not like it is now when you have 16 different varieties.

JA: Yeah, we weaned it back. This year Chase is going to have 12. We took a bunch of experiment stuff out. It's got to be where it's either got to pay for itself or not, you can't do it forever.

TEM: That must have, how does that change the way that you operate? Are you harvesting for longer because you have 16 varieties?

JA: No. you have so many days to harvest and so the greatest, the biggest, most fun part of having 16 or 12 varieties you always got something that's ripe. You're never picking something green; you're never picking something over-ripe. If you have 2, or say 3 varieties and you have to pick for 30 days because 00:55:00that's how many acres you have, my guess is, I don't know, because we don't do this anymore, but my guess is you're going to be picking something a little green, something a little over-ripe, some just right. so if you had 12 different varieties, a lot of those get picked just right.

TEM: More consistency throughout. That makes sense. Is there now as there are more and more craft brewers that are getting bigger and bigger are they coming directly to the farm to request things?

JA: Mm-hmm. We don't do a lot of business direct with brewers because we were up to, last year, we were partners at hop union but we are no longer partners there anymore. So, we'll be looking, or Jason will be looking for direct stuff. But Gale does a lot of hops direct.

NS: She does, yeah.

JA: I think Doug does a little. I'm not sure Charlie probably does a little. Those I think were through hop union.

NS: Yeah, those are.

JA: But the bigger guys, like Deschutes, I know they have a direct program. Sierra Nevada has a very large direct program. Some of the brewers in Portland have a direct program that we deal with. I don't know if it's up to them to say that they do it. It's not up to me. But yeah, we grow one variety strictly, it's the only ones of their kinds being grown, strictly for a brewery in Portland and it's an all-inclusive contract. They want every hop that's grown of that variety so they can say that they're the only ones that have it, I guess. I don't know. I don't care. They pay very well for it and they're very easy to work with.

TEM: What about, I did, in preparing for this interview did read a little bit about the 15-pound bales that you guys are making smaller, right?

JA: Yeah.

TEM: Is that something that, is that more like a direct-buy kind of relationship that you would have where brewers would come here and say, I'm not Bridgeport. I don't need tons and tons.

JA: We do two things with the 15-pound bales. Chase has some breweries that love the 15-pound bales because it matches to their tank size and then they don't and they can use 15-pounds. If they have a 200-pound bale they're like what am I going to do with it? Until they get it all used up. It's handy. He also uses it for when we have more experimental stuff to get the experimental hops at 15-pound bales out to all the brewers because then it's a nice bale. It's baled 00:58:00like we would bale a 200-pound bale if that's what they want and they can see it's handy. He's got quite a bit of call for it, but it's sometimes, you know, how many hours do you have in a day. He's bumping up against. He's got his big bales all sold it's hard to do that too. So, he isn't really pushing the 15-pound ones too much. He does have two brewers that he's worked with that I started working with that are really good guys. It's more of a personal relationship thing. So, he's going to keep doing it for them.

TEM: Yeah, I would assume that as an industry as the craft industry is more interested in the farming side, you guys still have to get your work done, that 00:59:00that must be a point of tension at a certain point? No?

JA: The way we try to do it is that we put it out there, whether it's a 2-acre block or 5-acre block, or whatever, but it's just part of the field. So it gets treated like everything else and that's part of the deal here. I mean, we'll do it but it's got to work for us, with us too. And those guys have been absolutely fantastic to work with. In all the breweries that I have worked with and all the years I've worked, I've only found one guy that just didn't understand it and didn't want to understand our part of it. It was, yeah, he just didn't want to hear it I guess. I said, well I can't help you.

TEM: What are some things as I'm assuming that as you've retired you're reflecting a bit. What are some things that you've thought about over the past 01:00:00month-ish, you know 6 weeks, that you will miss about the day-to-day of being the management?

JA: Man, I'm too new at enjoying the time off part of it. I'm not going to miss the headaches. I'm not going to miss the churning stomach at is it going to rain? Is the wind going to blow? Is the anchor going to hold? Are we going to have enough help? You know? I'm too new at it and I'm enjoying this lack of tension, so maybe in a couple, three months, six months...

TEM: Do a follow-up.

JA: Do a follow-up after harvest I'll tell you.

NS: You're not going to miss nights in the dryer.

JA: No, no. I'm not going to miss them. yeah. No, I will not miss that. You've got to put your whole life on hold for a month. Because we pick all day and then dry all night. Over the years, just the modifications and what not we did we put a lot of money into the picker and not as much into the dryer and so we could 01:01:00fill our house up in 8 hours, four floors. So, we'd pick in 10 hours what a lot of farms will pick in 20. So we pick all day and we dry all night. So, somebody has to be here to dry them and it's usually the head guy because it's kind of our theory that you go through all the expense and all the work to get the hops up to harvest and I don't think that just anybody should be drying them and burning them up or not drying them enough, or you know. that's the final product. Every bale that we send out of here has our number on it. It's like signing your name on it. So, we like them to be the best they can be, so we do it ourselves. It's tough. Especially for Chase last year the baby was brand new. It's just part of it. I'm sure he'll find somebody that will get on to drying. 01:02:00He can train somebody. I guess anymore now they got these fancy machines that do it for you and these probes and stuff. I don't know. just my probes stuck in and my arm you know [holds up his hands]. These guys are talking about these $7,000, $9,000 you plug into the dryer bed to tell if they're dry or not. I said, well, I have one. I'm just, I don't know it's right there [holds up his hand].

TEM: It came with the package.

JA: It came with the package! There you go. It's all-inclusive. But yeah, you know again it's not like when I retired I had to leave. I get my office. I can come here and play. I can see my guys every morning. My best guy, my foreman guy has been with me since, as long as I've been here almost. He's been here 30 years. I've been here 40. He started he was 16 years old, or 14, 14 or 16 something like that. Just a field hand. And he's obviously a real sharp guy. My 01:03:00brother and he got along real well and he's very sharp and he just kind of took, worked his way up real fast and he takes care of all of our hired help and stuff. We're very fortunate we have a lot of the same guys come back every year, so you don't have to babysit anybody. They already know what to do. We pay a little more than the neighbors, and that gets to be a little contention with some of the neighbors sometimes but it's worth it to me to have the good guys that we have that have been with us for years, they take good care of our stuff. They don't drink. They don't carouse around. They show up when they're supposed to. They come and they work their ass off and they go home and down in Mexico they've saved up all their money and they bought a lot of the farms around their little village and they've drilled a well or two and they bought combines and 01:04:00they bought tractors and they bought trucks. They've got a nice, big farm going down south.

TEM: Is that something that is common for the workers that come here during the summer to also farm back at home?

JA: I know it is for our guys. And probably some of Gale's guys because they're all kind of relations to some degree. But yeah, they work their ass off, they save their money, they go home and they invest it and they get 3 crops a year down there. They start with wheat, and that will be harvested probably May at the latest, April maybe. It's real early wheat comes off. Then they plant corn and then they end up they plant sorghum. Wheat they sell. Corn they sell some 01:05:00and they save some for eating. Then the sorghum they sell some and they save some for the animals. That's what the animals' feed is.

NS: And then they come here.

JA: Pardon?

NS: And then they come here to work.

JA: And then they come here. A certain amount of them come here. I don't know whether it's the short sick or the long stick that gets to come or has to come. I don't know how that works. I never talk [inaudible]. So it's nice to, you get the same guys it's really nice. They know what's up. They know what you expect. They know what's going on. it just works better for everybody.

NS: It's becoming harder and harder to do, though.

JA: Yes. Hired help is getting harder and harder and harder to find. It's getting more and more difficult to get a crew together.

TEM: What are some of the solutions to that? Are there like people have to pick, right? or people have to run the machinery that's picking?

JA: I know that some of area farmers who are reliant on hand labor are just going to get away from broccoli, cauliflower that kind of stuff and just go more into the machine pick stuff. For us what don't have a choice. We have hand labor. We've got to do it. We're just going to have to pay more, I guess.

NS: There are people that are trying to come up with machines to go in front of the picker or other things where you won't need as much labor.

JA: As many laborers.

NS: As many, yeah.

JA: They're trying to do self-training hops or set up the mesh in the trellis and all that stuff. It works but here, in Yakama it works a lot better because it's dry up there. Here it's so wet if you left the mat up there all winter it'd be this soggy, icky, yucky thing full of whatever, mildew and everything else. It was on the radio the other day that I don't know who keeps the numbers or whose numbers they were but it was people from Mexico there's more going back to 01:07:00Mexico than coming up anymore. The tide has reversed. Somebody in the coffee shop the other morning was talking about the government or somebody at the government getting involved with the program like in the '60s that bracero program where you would sign up... it was Fred that was talking about it.

NS: Yep.

JA: That you would sign up for an x number of workers or...?

NS: H-2A.

JA: I just barely heard about it. You would know more about it than I.

NS: Yeah. They'll sign up for, well, it's part of the H-2A program, but there's a place in Washington, they're based out of Washington, they're putting, it used to be a part of the farm bureau. They're putting offices in Oregon and Idaho as well, and so they'll sign them up through the H-2A program. Part of that is they have to provide housing, though. You can rent it or whatever. The people that have been involved in the program the last couple of years from Washington and 01:08:00Idaho said that they get the best workers because they want to come up here, just like in the old days. You said they want to come up here and work and go home.

JA: And go home. That's what they want. They don't want to stick around here.

NS: So, I think we're going to see more programs like that where that company will sign everybody up. They'll go down. They'll find them. They'll sign everybody up, bring them all up here. It'll be more expensive because you have to provide housing. But they'll bring them all up here. When they're done, they'll go home.

JA: Because I don't know what the next step would be would to reach farther into Central America? Honduras? El Salvador? I don't know? Some of the mountains? I know when I was a kid there was a time when the Oaxacan Indians came up here. These little tiny, short people. And they're black, like negro black, and they speak a whole different language than Spanish. They are the hardest working people I've ever seen in my life. They'd outwork anybody. It'd take 3 guys to 01:09:00keep up with one of those guys. I don't know whether they're going to get back into that kind of deal. How much father south can you reach down there? I don't know you know. it's all kind of in turmoil down there I think.

TEM: What an interesting, I mean in 100 years. You look at 100 years ago there were hundreds, thousands of workers coming to pick.

JA: Yeah, now what's it going to be like 20 years from now?

TEM: What do you feel most proud of? What's the thing that you kind of boast your chest up?

JA: As a hop farmer?

TEM: Yeah.

JA: Being the farmer that was the most diverse, I think. I'm very proud of all the offices I've served in for the hop community. I was through the growers' association. I was every seat on the commission at least once. HDA rep. I was 01:10:00hop growers America rep for a lot of years. But yeah just the...

NS: Stirring the pot a lot.

TEM: Yeah, I see a spoon up there.

JA: I kept things going up there. But yeah, I don't know I guess being very fortunate to have the opportunity to do it, and the right people helping and the guidance from the right people and getting into the specialty part of it and in the service industry. There's a lot of great people in this industry. Yeah.

TEM: That feels like such a nice concluding statement but I feel like I should also ask you if there's anything that when we were going to come do this that you were hoping one of us would ask or that you would have an opportunity to say?

JA: That pretty much covers it.

TEM: Well, I thank you. Did you have anything that you wished that I would've put on my list?

NS: Well, I learned a lot.

JA: It's a great industry to belong to, I'll tell you that.

NS: I've learned a lot.

JA: I've loved every minute of it. The hop industry in Oregon, especially in Oregon, is very tight-knit. When I did serve on the HDA board there was a lot of support for the Washington guys that I knew. Some I didn't know and they didn't know me. but the ones I knew were very, very supportive. Just, it's nice to belong to an industry that thinks of you, takes care of you, watches after you. you know. very fortunate with all the people that, the professional people, whether it's the field guys or the Daryl Smiths of the world and all that that help guide you through it all and got through it all. It was fun. It was a hell of a ride.

TEM: Well, congratulations on your retirement.

JA: Thank you. I'm going to enjoy it.