Our Story

My great-grandmother Louise was a young widow with a small son (my grandfather) when she first came to NY from Germany in 1934.  She and her second husband eventually moved to Schoharie in 1959 where they purchased the Hogan dairy farm on Warner Hill Rd. She said the land reminded her of the old Germany she grew up in. Dairy farming proved to be a hard way to retire, so in 1967 my grandparents Frank and Annemarie purchased the old George Ward farmstead and surrounding acreage and my great-grandmother and her husband moved down the hill to retire for real. My great-grandmother continued to live there for many years and it was the place where family memories were made. 

My grandparents held onto the farm and spent a lot of their own retirement in Schoharie. As a child, I grew up visiting here and like many of my family members, I have always held this place near and dear to my heart. However, as years went by, and I went off to college in Colorado, there were fewer family members in the area to visit the property, and it was at risk of being parceled off. So in 2014 I made the move back East to reinvigorate the farm and bring it back into productivity; with the intention of growing hops and brewing beer. New York was just then introducing new legislation to bring the hop industry back to the state, an industry that Schoharie was once well known for over a hundred years prior. Upon arriving to the old farmhouse, planting some test hop varieties, and getting a job at Hager Hops in Cooperstown, eventually, the idea of growing hops for profit fell flat. However, during that time I had also begun dabbling in other farm ventures; beekeeping being one of them - and so Hop House Farm was born!

With a heavy focus now on beekeeping, the name Hop House Farm was inspired by one of the last remaining outbuildings on the old Ward Farmstead: an 1800’s hop house. At one time, hops were grown here on the farm and still exist in the hedgerows.  Fast forward to 2018, my good friends from Colorado were searching hard for a place to locate their soon-to-be brewery. I sent them a list of promising reasons why settling in Schoharie would be an ideal move for them. After only one visit, they saw the potential and fell in love with the lush, rolling hills of Schoharie Valley. After much painstaking renovation to the old hop house, in 2021 we finally opened Wayward Lane Brewing! A farm and brewery working in tandem to create a lively space where we can tinker with new ways of producing, consuming, regenerating, and educating. We have since added a permaculture orchard, where we intend to use the numerous varieties of fruits in our spontaneously fermented wild ales. We have expanded the beekeeping operations and other products from the hive (also frequently used in the brewing process), and there are many ideas yet to come to fruition! We are growing and learning more every single day, and we hope to share our experiences with everyone that we meet.

MEET THE BEES!

Meet Andrew Rowles

THE FARMER ‘ROUND THESE PARTS