Hop Farms

Oh, @Patsy Faye , that was the SMELLIEST job that I have ever had ! You could smell those hops on people for miles, I think. When I would come home, the washing machine was just inside our back door, and I would peel off my stinky clothes and start the washer right away before the smell could permeate the whole house.
For us, it was pretty much a whole seasonal thing, beginning in the early spring, cutting root startings for new hop fields, then planting, and when the hops came up in the regular fields, we had to string the twine down from the overhead wires for the growing hop vines to climb up.
As the vines grow, they have to be trained to grow up the twine, and that is done several times until the hops are about head tall. Then they can just grow for the next couple of months without extra workers; but in the fall, then the hop harvest starts in earnest.
We used to have 2 -12 hour shifts, one daytime crew and one night crew, and then they changed that to 3 -8hour shifts, which was easier to do. Sometimes, we worked our own shift and then split a shift with another worker, so we got extra hours. It was all straight time pay, no overtime, regardless of how many hours a person worked, but it was extra money.
I drove the hop truck, which was a huge behemoth of a truck, and it had a flatbed and stock racks on it.
I drove down the rows and a tractor with a lift went behind me, cutting the twine at the top of the wire, and two more people walked ahead of the truck, cutting the twine at the bottom.
When the truck was loaded down so heavy it looked sort of like a mountain of green spaghetti, then I headed back to the hop plant and we unloaded it into conveyors that separated the hops from the vines, and then the hops were baled, and the vines were later shredded and used to fertilize the fields.
The trucks we used were old and not really reliable.
One driver had one with no brakes, and mine had headlights that would go out when I went over a bump in the road.( Scary when I was going around a corner and that happened !) They all leaked oil, and used a lot of water, so we had to check all of that before we started our shift.
The hop harvest went for around a month, because there were some that ripened earlier than others.
We were all totally exhausted from the hard work and long hours when it was finished. After harvest, Annheiser-Busch would throw a big party/picnic for all of the workers. They provided kegs and kegs of beer, and soda pop for the kids and people who didn't drink beer. We had a potluck picnic , and the whole family would usually come to the potluck.
I only went to the picnic, but sometimes the party afterwards lasted most of the night before all of the tired (and drunk ) workers finally staggered home.

 

When I worked in the hops, it was in the early 1970's back when my kids were little. I thought I would post a short video here showing the hop farms in Bonners where I worked, and I was flat amazed at how much more modern the whole process is done nowdays !
I knew that mostly migrant workers came in and harvested the hops, and not so much of the local people as used to work there back in the days when I was there. We had all local people back then.
Anyway, this is the best video that I can find that shows the area, and the hops grown up in Idaho, and since it is a pretty modern video, nothing about the harvest looks like I remember it from the story that I just posted.
I guess some things just change in 40+ years.....