Shaking isn't something that you could do at home very easily. When the hop
trucks arrive at the picker, the hop vines are attached to chains with hooks
that pull the hop vines up out of the trucks. The vines are shaken
violently enough that the hop cones fall off. Then the hops go by conveyor
to the dryer where the hops are dried to the desired moisture content. I
asked my boss how he knew when the hops were dry enough. He had done it for
so many years, he could tell if they were dry enough just by sticking his
hand in the drying hops. The hops are then baled in burlap using a big
press.

When my sister-in-law was a teenager she used to work in the hop yards
picking hops by hand. I can't imagine picking 100s of acres of hops by
hand, but that's how they used to do it. Must have taken humongous crews to
get them all picked or maybe there wasn't as many acres in hops then.

Now the hops are grown on high trellises and a worker in a crow's nest cuts
the vines and strings at the top. Another worker cuts the vines and string
at ground level and the hops drop into trucks with high sides and off they
go down the road to the picker with some of the vines dragging along behind!
Although some growers in Europe have tested growing hops on low trellises.
Since I'm not around the hop business anymore, I don't know whether that
became a feasible option or not.

There - that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about harvesting
hops!
--
Donna in Idaho
Reply to daawra3553 at yahoo dot com

"Jack Schmidling" > wrote in message
...

> Tell me more about that "shaken". We tediously pick them and it aint fun.
>
> js