A stiring in the hop gardens...

August bank holiday weekend, a chance to catch up with jobs on the allotment, perhaps welcome visiting relatives and gather with friends for a barbecue in the evening sunshine, the late summer air scented with the ripening of the season. Or, if you farm in one of the hop growing counties of England, in Kent perhaps, or close to the Welsh borders in Herefordshire or the Teme Valley of Worcestershire, then maybe a time to be busy -firing the hop kilns, housing pickers, and making ready for the culmination of a year’s hard work and patience, watching the hop bines with one eye on the weather, and that first morning rising with the dawn and with the mists, to bring in the bines from their ordered rows in the fields, laden with their fresh, green, resinous hop cones. To bring them into the bustle and disorder of the yard, to be picked and dried, weighed and packed in their enormous pockets ready to be shipped to the merchant, or straight off to the breweries, as apprehension and excitement of what this year’s harvest will bring, perceptibly fills the air –a bumper crop perhaps, not too much wilt affecting the Fuggles in the top field, or a repeat of the downy mildew that ruined so much of the crop five years ago...Well faithful reader, word has reached the Bitter End from our hop merchants that things are stirring in the first few hop gardens of Kent. Early indications are not for a bumper crop, with Challenger and Fuggles being somewhat weather affected, but with fingers crossed a better crop than last year which saw stocks of some varieties in limited supply. It will be a few weeks before the high-alpha varieties are harvested, and the crop safely in, but next time you sip a pint of hoppy ale, give a thought to the humble Humulus lupulus and the year upon year of bustle and life which has been brought by its harvest, to the hop gardens of England every August bank holiday.