NOTES ON
1954 - Hop Picking
in the Kentish Hop Fields
http://comp.uark.edu/~dsears/photos/Eileen54hop
We
loved going hop picking. Mum and Dad
regarded it as a two-week paid holiday.
We saw it as an adventure with our families in the countryside. We looked forward to being picked by a
coach, dropped off at the fields, and being in an environment so different from
our normal lives. The dew on the
ground, the sound of vines being pulled, the smell of hops, the distant sound
of tractors. The breaks for tea and
food, the flasks of tea and the biscuit tins of food, often cheese flan made
the night before. The bon-fires. The excitement when the farmer came to
collect the hops and the competition over who collected most. The officialdom of the man who entered the
amount in a booklet. The farm vehicles
and the trailers loaded up with hops.
On a good day the farmer would let us climb on the load. Sometimes Mum and Dad would tie string round
the bin and section a bit off for us, and we would get paid for the hops we
picked.
Mostly,
we would explore the farm, running up the lanes of hops to see what was
beyond. At the end of two weeks the
field was bare and we collected our pay.
Throughout the week we anticipated what we would buy, and one year I
bought a compendium of games that I had always wanted. A few weeks later it was tossed aside. It was just cheap card and pathetic
ideas. But the memories lasted
forever. By the time I was leaving
primary school the hop-pickers were being replaced with machines.