When we first applied for the job of working the hop harvest I didn’t know what to expect, in my head it was a lot more idyllic than reality would be; frolicking through the fields, harvesting by hand, the sun shining down, bird song in the air. Weeks before the rest of the crew arrived, our time on the hop farm certainly started that way, walking row after row after row bashing down the weeds that would get in the way of the bine pullers. I mean, it wasn’t by any means idyllic, but we spent a lot of time outside in the sun and it was more like what I’d thought. What I hadn’t imagined was the mammoth machine that would be involved, how horribly noisy it would be and the danger that would come with it.
It all starts in the field, small tractors have strange vine pulling machines attached that - when working properly - cut the hops at ground level and pull them off the wire their supports lead up to, dumping them neatly into a trailer that’s pulled behind. In reality, a proportion of the hop-vines get left behind and some hand pulling happens as to not leave them to wilt away; on one particularly bad morning under the blistering hot sun most of the vines in an acre didn’t pull off, I ended up dragging them down and chucking them into a trailer by hand, hour after hour, not fun.
Once the tractors complete a few rows, the trailers are full and it was the job of the drivers to switch off trailers and to transport them back to the farm. This should have been the easiest job, but with people unexperienced with towing and the trailer hitches not always lining up right - it was chaos. Most of the jockey stands got broken, several people left the cars in drive - causing crashes, a full trailer with a flat tyre almost fell one someone and one person even broke a finger. Saying that, when I was driving a tractor doing this I didn’t mind the job, although it got chilly at times zooming about without a cab to sit in.
At the farm the trailers are driven through the factory, where the vines would hopefully all get pulled off and dumped into a large pile on the floor. There strippers strip a vine off the pile and hand it to the hooker who hooks it onto the track - someone really had a fun time making up the job titles - where it gets transported high up into the air and along to the mouth of the machine which Ben got to control. Everyone thought that Ben had it pretty easy up there, directing the vines until our manager took over for him one morning and promptly cut his finger off. There was other dangers in the main shed too, not only did vines occasionally get improperly hooked causing them to hurtle down, managing to hit people with pin point accuracy, but the hooks hurtling down the rails were a hazard to heads and led to some hair being ripped out and one concussion.
The vines travel through the machine where the hops are shaken free and collected, creating a mound of mess before they travel into the kiln to dry. I thankfully never had to work in the kiln, by all accounts it was a horrible sweaty job where the temperature would rise to tropical heights in the pursuit of perfect dryness. Finally the hops are compacted and packaged, ready to head to NZ hops to be sold and turned into beer.
Would we jump into another hop harvest?
Pros | Cons |
Well paid | Long hours and erratic |
Access to kitchen/ bathroom for free | Potentially dangerous |
Work wasn't too diffucult | Boring |
| Loud |
| Someone literally lost a finger |
We’re not hurrying back to do another hop season but we were glad that we did this one.
On paper, the cons seem to outweigh the pros but I left off one important aspect; the people we worked with. I honestly think that having a group that all got along made the whole harvest so much easier and a lot more fun. There was inside jokes and people to commiserate with when the day wasn’t going our way. Yes there was times where people got on one another nerves and it was also the gossipiest place iv’e ever been, but at the end of it we all decided to head off together for one last get together - despite having a staff party the night before. So I won’t miss the harvest itself but I’ll miss the people we did it with, hopefully we’ll see them again on the road sometime.
Plus, I was somehow allowed to drive this gigantic digger - would highly recommend.
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