From the Farm

What grows here becomes part of what we make.

Lady Cone Hop Yard is our women-run farm in Branchton, Ontario. What began as a hop yard supplying local breweries has grown to include seasonal vegetables, herbs, flowers and botanicals — some planted intentionally, some returning year after year, and some growing wild where they please.

We are not a certified organic farm. We grow with organic intentions, using regenerative and organic-minded practices wherever we can. What thrives changes from year to year. Weather shifts. Crops surprise us. Some seasons give more than others.

And we work with what grows.

From plant to product.

Hops, lavender, calendula, yarrow, chamomile, lemon balm, rosemary and other botanicals are harvested in season and prepared according to how they will be used.

Some are dried. Some are slowly infused into olive or jojoba oil. Some are distilled into hydrosols. Some are used whole in bath and body preparations.

Nothing is grown just to look pretty on a label. If we use it, there is a reason.

Hops are where it started.

We grow and harvest our own hops — the botanical that first connected the farm to The Bitter Shed.

Beyond brewing, we work with hops in different forms depending on what we are making. They are slowly infused into oils for skin and body care, distilled into hydrosol, dried for bath preparations and used throughout the line where they make sense.

Grown here. Harvested here. Then put to work.

More than what we grow ourselves.

Not every ingredient in The Bitter Shed comes from our farm — and we don’t pretend it does.

We also formulate with carefully chosen ingredients like grass-fed tallow, raw honey, beeswax, clays, carrier oils and essential oils. Our raw honey comes from the farm, and our beeswax is sourced from the same local beekeeper who tends the hives and harvests the honey.

What matters is knowing why an ingredient is there and what it brings to the formula.

The farm changes. So do we.

A working farm is never static. What grows well one year may struggle the next. A botanical we have plenty of this season may be limited in another. New plants are added. Others return on their own.

That means The Bitter Shed will always carry some of that seasonality with it.

We grow what makes sense. Harvest what is ready. Preserve what we can. And turn what thrives into something useful.

What grows here becomes part of what we make.