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1 2 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t MEET YOUR MAKERS MOST HOPS FOR BREWERIES IN THE U.S. are grown in the Pacific Northwest, but Marty Kuchinski and his wife Claudia broke the mold when they decided to turn their 20-acre tree farm in Northern California into a hops farm in 2005. The nearby city of Sacramento had previously been the top hop-growing area in the country, but the industry disappeared in the 1970s; Hops-Meister was the first Cali- fornia hops farm in 25 years. Kuchinski adds, "When we first put the hops root stock in, we didn't know what would grow. There was a lot of trial and error. I think we've torn out more varieties than we've planted successfully!" Hops-Meister, which is a Certified Organic farm and processor, currently grows eight varieties, including stan- dards like Cascade and Chinook that they brought from Washington years ago and have adapted to the local climate; but they've also adapted and trademarked two heirloom varieties called Ivanhoe and Gargoyle. Their 20 acre farm can yield enough hops for six-to-seven million pints, with one barrel of beer usually only requiring about one pound of hops. "Hops is the sexy ingredient of beer, but it's usually down by yeast in the ingredient list," Kuchinski laughs. Hops-Meister provides for a number of breweries, large and small, like ThirstyBear Brewery in San Francisco, Stone Brewery in San Diego and Moylan's in Novato, CA. Once the hops are harvested from their 12-foot trellises, they are solar-dried in baskets placed in 40-foot containers that circulate air. They are then processed into pellets according to the needs of each brewery. And beer isn't the only Hops- Meister hops are used for, Kuchinski says. "Our hops get used in tea, as a neutral oil, ciders and even hop baths!" TRUFFLES (THE FUNGI, NOT THE CHOCOLATES) might better deserve the nickname "black gold" over oil, when one pound can fetch $800 wholesale. However, when Franklin Garland read about truffles in 1979 in a story in The Wall Street Journal, he'd never heard of truffles, much less tasted one. But the story, about how the French were inoculating trees with fungus to pro- duce truffles, caught his attention. With no professional agriculture experience, Garland struck out to learn more about the inoculation process, cumulating in a trip to France with his father to finally see (and taste) the truffles he'd learned so much about. Garland left France having purchased 500 trees to plant in North Carolina, something that no other farmer in the U.S. was doing at the time. He recalls humorously, "Truffles is not a get-rich- quick business. We planted those trees in 1980. We didn't harvest any truffles until 1992!" Al- though Garland says it's typically around six-to-eight years that you should begin to see the mush- rooms, all the filbert trees—which are a certain species of hazelnut—must be carefully tended to in that time. "They're like tomato plants; they need to be watered and cared for." A truffle's aroma develops around the end of their maturing cycle, so Garland uses his three standard poodles to help sniff out the fragrant mushrooms among the trees. Growing truffles is a long process, but the payoff is big. One acre can yield up to 75 pounds of truffles, and Garland typically has a minimum of 10,000 trees on his property. Although he's had success selling truffles to restaurants all over the U.S., in recent years Garland has for the most part transitioned to selling the trees themselves to those who want to grow their own truffles. Franklin Garland Owner of Garland Truffles in Hillsborough, NC Marty Kuchinski Owner of Hops-Meister Hops in Clearlake, CA Introducing the people across the country behind the food we love to eat by Jesse Hom-Dawson PHOTO COURTESY OF GARLAND TRUFFLES PHOTO COURTESY OF HOPS-MEISTER HOPS ■cr