History in the Cabinet

A little building clad with wooden sheathing sits just at the end of Sawyer Hill Road; it is a house for drying hops... its double doors opening to the east with two small windows on the west and south sides, a stone-lined kiln understory and now an open interior used by its owner for storage. 

Hops have been commercially grown in New England since the seventeenth century to provide flavor for beer. During much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Massachusetts led the nation in hop production, and by the 1820s, hop growing had spread to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Production peaked in the 1870s; then, as soils were drained of their nutrients, the centers of production moved west to New York and then to the Pacific Northwest.

Questions? Feel free to email June at junewmiller@gmail.com.