Hop

“ All work is done in a leisurely fashion. An old horse is discharging cargo by means of a whim, instead of a steam crane, from a Dutch-looking lugger. Piles of hop bales litter the landing-place, and it would seem almost as if their hypnotic influence had cast a sleepy spell over the whole environment. ”

“ Here, too, you see hop-gardens; looking more than a little bare in spring, but with plenty of work going on, chiefly in trimming and tarring the ends of the new ash-poles that are to be planted, thick as forests, for the hop-bines to grow upon. Here and there are the hutches in which the hop-pickers will live in August, and now and again you see an oast-house; the old buildings with their quaint outlines, the new apt to be eye-sorrows for angularity and sheer commonplace ugliness. ”

“ The hopfield and the nutwood are often scenes of much jolly old English humour and enjoyment. In Kent and Sussex the whole country is odorous with the aroma of hop, as it is breathed from the drying kilns and huge wagons filled with towering loads of hops, thronging the road to London. But not only is the atmosphere perfumed with hops, but the very atmosphere of the drawing-room and dining-room too. ”

“ Hop picking on bright days in the valleys of Western Washington is the delight of the native. It is for him and all his kith and kin, a joy unspeakable. He comes from near and far. He will travel hundreds of miles in his big canim with his full household and all his earthly possessions to enjoy the delightful season as much for his real love for it as for the money that he knows will always come at the close. Then the hop field is redolent of perfume and melody. The fields are alive with pickers; the air is joyous with sound. ”

“ In front of the stoup, where we dined, the garden was laid out with a smooth plot of grass, surrounded with borders of flowers, and separated from a ripening field of wheat by a light railed fence, over which the luxuriant hop-vine flung its tendrils and graceful blossoms. Now I must tell you the hop is cultivated for the purpose of making a barm for raising bread. As you take great interest in housewifery concerns, I shall send you a recipe for what we call hop- rising*. ”

“ That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. ”

“ Larks I have not seen hop in everyday life, though sometimes I have thought that they did when running quickly over ploughed land in winter, as starlings often do when they break from a run which has become too quick for them into a running hop. But I came to the conclusion that this was only apparent, and due to their up and down motion over the clods of earth. A hop is quite foreign to the lark's disposition, yet, when courting, "the male bird advances upon the female with wings drooped, crest and tail raised, and with a series of impressive hops." ”

“ The hop-pickers, many of them tramps who lived in unions and alms-houses in the winter, and who stray down into Kent during the hop season, presently discovered the white and hungry face pressed against the palings, and jeered at the girl, and called her names she could not understand, making merry at her forlornness.
The hop raiser heard them, and discovering the object of their rude merriment, came forward, opened a gate in the palings, and hailed the girl. He was short of hands, he said, and would give her sixpence a day, and food and drink, if she chose to help in the hop picking. ”

“ None of us knew anything about the hop business, and it was totally accidental that we engaged in it, but seeing that there were possibilities of great gain, I took extra pains to study up the question, and found that by allowing our hops to mature thoroughly and curing them at a low temperature, and baling them while hot, we could produce a hop that would compete with any product in the world. ”

“ I’m a thinkin’ it tante a rael gentleman that’s proud, but only a hop. You’ve seen a hop grow, hante you? It shoots up in a night, the matter of several inches right out of the ground, as stiff as a poker, straight up and down, with a spick and span new green coat and a red nose, as proud as Lucifer. ”

“ These last objects were explained by the presence of a hop-field skirting one side of the common, a hop-field luckily not yet in that state which attracts hop-pickers, or the common would hardly have been a place to which gentlemen care to take their wives. On the opposite side to the hop-field the ground fell away, and the tips of two hop-kilns peered at us over the edge. In front of us, concealed by the furze and other bushes of a prickly, clinging nature, lay the road, along which people going home to houses, as Edelgard put it, were constantly hurrying. ”

“ My first thought in the morning, when the level sun streaming through the hop vines brought me on the sudden wide awake—as a soldier should wake, slipping cleanly and completely out of his sleep-heaviness—my first thought, I say, was of a shadowed face vanishing into the night-glimmer, and something enchantingly mysterious to be sought for in this remote Acadian village. Then, remembering my business and hoping that my indiscretion had not muddled it, I resolutely put the folly from me and sprang up. ”

“ And what is stranger still, this same bone-earth bed crops out on the south side of the chalk at Farnham, and stretches along the foot of those downs, right into Kent, making the richest hop lands in England, through Surrey, and away to Tunbridge. So that it seems as if the bed lay under the chalk everywhere, if once we could get down to it.
But how does it make the hop lands so rich?
Because hops, like tobacco and vines, take more phosphorus out of the soil than any other plants which we grow in England ”

“ Not a village but there is a hop-master. Parents should strain every nerve to prevent these Hop-meetings, in ale houses. It is well known they are not in the path of virtue.
The first circumstance which induced our youthful poet to warble his "wild, artless notes," is very interesting, on account of the elegant simplicity which distinguishes the following description of his harvest partner. ”

“ HE hops used in beer-brewing are the female flowers of the hop plant known to botanists as the Humulus lupulus of Linnæus. At first sight it may seem strange that hops and wolves should have anything in common, but it has been explained that the word lupulus comes from the name by which the Romans called the hop plant—Lupus Salictarius—the idea being that the hop was as destructive among the willows (where it grew) as a wolf among sheep. ”

“ On the final day of the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular individual into a crib among the hops. Shrieks of laughter greet the disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except a struggling leg protruding from the crib.
The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious blaze. As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made year after year—"fire is a good servant, but a bad master." ”

“ When the season for hop gathering came, the children had a grand frolic, as this kind of labor, in which they took a part, was a real pleasure to them. The hops were so light and fragrant, and the picking of them was such fun, and so many men and women assisted at the work, and the long summer day was closed with such a grand rural entertainment, when the great table was spread in the farmer's orchard. Frank and Fanny wished that there might be a dozen hop picking frolics every year. ”

“ Another well-known adage reminds us that:—
"The higher the hill the lower the grass."
And equally familiar is the following:—
"While the grass groweth the seely horse starveth."
In connection with hops, the proverb runs that "hops make or break;" and no hop-grower, writes,
Mr. Hazlitt, [3] "will have much difficulty in appreciating this proverbial dictum. An estate has been lost or won in the course of a single season; but the hop is an expensive plant to rear, and a bad year may spoil the entire crop." ”

“ The game of “Hop-step-and-jump,” Norfolk. This game is played in the west of Sussex, but not in the east. It is played thus by two or more boys. Each boy in his turn stands first on one leg and makes a hop, then strides or steps, and lastly, putting both feet together, jumps. The boy who covers the most ground is the victor.—Halliwell’s Dictionary. ”

“ Here are several hop-plantations in and about this village; but for this once the prayers of the over-production men will be granted, and the devil of any hops there will be. The bines are scarcely got up the poles; the bines and the leaves are black, nearly, as soot; full as black as a sooty bag or dingy coal-sack, and covered with lice. It is a pity that these hop-planters could not have a parcel of Spaniards and Portuguese to louse their hops for them. Pretty devils to have liberty, when a favourite recreation of the Donna is to crack the lice in the head of the Don! ”

“ Boys often contend for superiority of skill in this game, and he who passes the rope about most times without interruption is the conqueror. In the hop season a hop-stem, stripped of its leaves, is used instead of a rope, and, in my opinion, it is preferable.” On Good Friday on Brighton beach the fisher folk used to play at skipping, six to ten grown-up people skipping at one rope. ”

“ I selected Jarge for foreman of the hop-picking as a most responsible and trustworthy man; it was then that his sense of humour was most conspicuous, a very important and valuable trait when 300 women and children, and the men who supplied them with hops on the poles, have to be kept cheerful and good-tempered every day and all day for three weeks or a month, sometimes under trying conditions. ”

“ This part of our route lay through the country of hops, which plant perhaps supplies the want of the vine in American scenery, and may remind the traveller of Italy, and the South of France, whether he traverses the country when the hop-fields, as then, present solid and regular masses of verdure, hanging in graceful festoons from pole to pole; the cool coverts where lurk the gales which refresh the wayfarer; or in September, when the women and children, and the neighbors from far and near, are gathered to pick the hops into long troughs ”

“ Supposing that we have noticed the shoot, when it began to bend over, pointed toward the window—say a north window—and that, when we next look at it after some hours, it points into the room, that is to say, south, and again, north after another interval, we shall have discovered the curious fact that the hop-plant has a certain power of movement by which its shoot may sometimes point in one direction, sometimes in another. ”

“ The chief employment of the women is in the hop gardens and orchards, and in the former there is continuous work for the greater part of the year.
As the culture of the hop is peculiar to this district, it may be necessary to give a brief description of the mode in which it is conducted. The land is prepared with considerable attention by fallowing, deep stirring, and cleaning; it is next thrown into rows of little hillocks at equal distances; and in these hillocks the young shoots of the hop (previously nursed in the orchard) are planted. ”

“ As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the Hop-pole, or the Hop and Barleycorn, the Barley Mow, the Barley Stack, the Malt and Hops, and the Hopbine, are very general tributes of honour rendered to beer. In many ale-houses a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some conspicuous place. ”

“ Hopping on one foot as long as he can do it and maintain his equilibrium, the student is made to hold the other leg as far back as he is able. The next style of hop is with one leg as far upward at the side as may be, and then with the leg forward. ”

“ The uniform rate is 17s. 71⁄2d. per cwt., while hops of foreign growth are taxed 2l. 5s. per cwt.
The only mention made by Mr. Scot of the great object of dread to the hop-grower is in the following passage:
The hoppe that lykes not his entertaynement, namely, his seate, his grounde, his keeper * * * * commeth up greene and small in stalke, thicke and rough in leaves, very like unto a nettle. ”

“ Every settler grows, as an ornament in his garden, or should grow, hops, which form one of the principal components of maple-beer when added to the sap.
HOP-RISING. This excellent, and, I might add, indispensable, article in every settler's house, is a valuable substitute for ale or beer-yeast, and is made in the following simple manner:—Take two double handfuls of hops, boil in a gallon of soft water, if you can get it, till the hops sink to the bottom of the vessel; make ready a batter formed by stirring a dessert-platefull of flour and cold water till smooth and pretty thick together ”

“ There were, too, very many gates, repairs to fences, hurdle-making, and odd jobs, to keep a man employed for months at a time. The building of three hop-kilns, with the necessary storerooms for green and dried hops, as the hop acreage increased, the preparation of hop-poles, and the erection of wire-work on larger poles, which gradually superseded the ordinary pole system, all demanded a great deal of regular work. ”

“ Angel and Silverton, constituting the great hop growing localities, with Salem, the center and distributing point. Through this stretch of country are seen everywhere the buildings for the drying of hops, and during the autumn months there is a scene of continual activity for the growers, pickers, pressers and buyers, getting the hops ready for shipment to eastern markets, principally to be used by the large breweries. ”