You might ask, “What do hops have to do with a thoroughbred racing farm?” No. hops aren’t the secret food supplement for fast horses.
One of the major markets in this area between 1860 – 1900 was hops. The early summer rains, warm days and cool evenings were ideal for certain varieties of hops. The state’s harvest in 1888 exceeded 6 million pounds and production grew to 9 million pounds by 1890. During this boom, Western Washington hops supplied the US and were also shipped overseas. Hops were the original crop on the Munger farm and as late as the 1960s, the property still had a three-story kiln house used for drying hops.
Blight eventually wiped-out hop farmers in Western Washington, who often turned to dairy and other farming out of necessity. While hops haven’t been commercially grown on the property for over 100 years, members of the family are avid home brewers and have been regularly crafting beer privately more than a quarter century. Who knows, we might experiment with a small hop crop on the farm again someday.
