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Video: Hop picking season
in full swing.

by Adam Williams

A dry start to September looks
set to help farmers on their way to a healthy hop picking
season.

The annual clamour to collect this
bines began last week and weather permitting, should finish by the
end of next week.

Boughton farmer Tony Redsell (pictured
right) opened the gates to his Parsonage Farm hop garden to
show how the traditional harvest has changed from a few weeks away
on holiday for east Londoners to a mechanised production line
serving customers on both sides of the Atlantic.

An army of workers play their part
in the picking process from the guys on top of a hydraulic
trailer chopping down the bines to those meticulously picking off
each hop one by one as it’s sorted through machinery.

Tony’s family has been in the
business for more than 125 years while he himself has run the show
since 1954.

He said: “When I started the hop
varieties weren’t the same. We still grow traditional English
varieties called Goldies and Fuggles, but tolerant varieties are
now more widely grown after fungus swept through the Weald of Kent
and the Midlands.

“Of course, back then we had
hundreds and hundreds of hand pickers, largely from the east end of
London. Ours mainly came from West Ham and Plaistow.

“Nowadays, it’s all machines, but we did manage to keep traces of
our old hop picking families until about 10 years ago. Today, the
labour comes largely from eastern Europe, who again like the old
Londoners, come back year after year.”

A day in the life of the hop picker
begins at 7am and finishes at 6pm with a 30-minute lunch break and
15 minutes for tea in the morning and afternoon.

Today, 25% of production goes
overseas to the United States with 70% used by regional brewers.
The remaining 5% is used by micro breweries, an ever emerging
player in the market.

See more pictures and read
more about hop picking in this week's Faversham News, out
Thursday.