If you drive down Lane 13 you might get lucky and see an acre of two different varieties of hops being tended to by sheep.

Shannon Sapp, co-owner of Secret Ingredient Farm, added Babydoll Southdown Sheep to the Secret Ingredient Farm staff so they could trim the leaves of their hop plants. The sheep have been in for roughly two weeks and they will happily jump out of their faded baby blue trailer to tend to their chores.

This is one example of how Secret Ingredient Farms grows its crop naturally with minimum waste. The trellis for their hop plants is made out of recycled oil field tubing.

“We like to tell people we grow the hops naturally with hard work and a little rock and roll,” Sapp said. 

Secret Ingredient Farm is in its fourth year of hops production; Sapp first planted the crop in 2021 but it takes two years for the hops to become mature enough for use and now in their fourth year the hops have reached maturity, she said. Now, Sapp expects a 2-3 inch cone to come off of the hops plants.

At Secret Ingredient Farm two types of hops are grown on a one acre plot; cascade and comet hops. Cascade hops are used in traditional IPA style beers and comet hops have a bright flavor with notes of pineapple. Sapp said that they have recently begun selling comet hops to WYOld West Brewing Company in Powell which uses them for its peanut butter stout and jalapeño beer. 

Hops primary agriculture value is for beer. It was first used by monks as a preservative for their brews when they shipped them overseas Sapp said, but it can also be used to make a calming tea.

But, they didn’t initially start growing the hops to try to get into any untapped market in Powell.

“My sister and I [are] plant nerds and we wanted to do peppers … but we wanted another crop that would really kind of pay for it,” Sapp said.

After seeing an article about how hops could be grown for home brewing or sold to other small brewers, the sisters jumped at the idea and asked their father who owns the land if they could dedicate a plot to the crop.

“Dad’s like, ‘well take that end of the pasture ... if it doesn’t grow, you can always mow it and just plow it in and we’ll get a new pasture,’ but it really took off,” Sapp said.

Last year she said they harvested 375 pounds of hops off of the comet plants and around 200 pounds off of the cascades plants. Sapp joked that “the cascade’s my lagger,” it doesn’t seem to grow quite as well as the comet and she said the Wyoming climate may be a factor. Hops are typically grown in Oregon and Washington but her crop is doing well.

 “I irrigate quite a bit, they say when it’s growing hard like this, they suggest you water once a week,” Sapp said. “So they’re pretty water intensive and they really are pretty intensive on the nitrogen.”

The crop is fertilized twice before July with a common garden fertilizer, if they fertilize after July the plants produce more leaves but not as many cones to harvest.

Around Labor Day, Sapp said the plants are usually ready to harvest. They have to be sure that they get the cones off the stock before they dry and the resin falls off, “the brewers really like the resin.”

To harvest the hops they hook an attachment to their tractor that Sapp jokes looks like an Orc Tower from “Lord of the Rings.” The tower is used to cut down the 15-foot tall stocks and then they rent a hops harvester from Northwest College.

“The machine … just basically beats it with these combs, beats everything off, it comes out of the conveyor belt, and then we dry it,” Sapp said.

From here they turn the dried hops into pellets using a pelletizer and they sort the pellets into 10 and 1 pound mylar bags which are kept in a freezer. Then the hops wait to be used in boozy beverages or delicious tea.

For more information visit Secret Ingredient Farm on Facebook.