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JUNE Hickman was as happy as
a
pig in well, whatever pigs
are happy in. The smell of hops, the avenues of heavy green bines and the gentle
chug of the tractor working its way to and from the farm and made the 1940s seem
like only yesterday.For when she was a little girl, June travelled with her
family of eight brothers and sisters from their home in the Black Country to
spend the late summer and early autumn hop picking in Worcestershire.
“It was one of the best times of my life,” she said. “I loved it. The comraderie,
the countryside. It was like heaven to me.”
This week, as a 70th birthday present, she was back again. This time
along with two friends, Edie Homer and Jackie Harper. They picked hops by hand,
got their fingers green and smelly and. filled up the old sacking crib. Just
like they used to.
It was Jackie who had arranged the day, partly as a pick me-up for June, who has
recently been seriously ill.
“I told her there was one thing that would really make me feel better and that
was to go hop picking again,” said June.
“I never dreamed I would. It’s the best birthday present I can imagine.”
Jackie had also been among the Black Country army of pickers that descended on
the hop fields of Worcestershire and Herefordshire every year up until the 1960s
and she remembered her family picked on the farm of a Mr Ranford at Suckley.
“So I went on the internet, tapped in Suckley and up came a website
www.suckleypo.co.uk Through this, Jackie contacted the current Suckley post
office. owners Roger and Barbara Blackburn, who
had posted the site,
and lo and behold, who was one of their postmen, but John Ranford, former farmer
of Priory Redding Farm, Suckley.
The Ranford family
farmed at Priory Redding for a couple of hundred years, before John retired and
sold up about eight years ago.It was there that Jackie picked hops as a young
girl, so it was a trip back down a country memory
lane for her too.
John organised the day for June, Jackie and their friend Edie Homer to travel
from their homes at Blackheath to the hop fields of Frances Lowden at Stanford
Bishop, in the
neighbouring parish to Suckley, for-hop picking as they remembered it.Oh,
it'sJovely," said June, her still nimble fingers plucking the plump hop buds off
the bines and dropping them into the crib. "I could do this all day.”
"We had such fun. It was probably the best holiday we had as kids." John
remembers preparing for the annual influx of visitors by scrubbing out the cow
and calf sheds, which, despite their obviously agricultural setting, were
scrupulously clean.
"Just to make sure, our mother always took some DDT powder to keep off the fleas
and Suleo liquid to stop nits in our hair," said June "But about the only things
we used to see were the mice running across the beams at night." Two or three
families shared a room and one of her earliest memories is of entering her
sleeping quarters for the first time and being struck by all the embroidered
quilts and blankets people had brought with them."It was just a kaleidoscope of
colour" she recalled. In the evenings, when the adults retired to the local pubs
like the Nelson at Longley Green or the Herefordshire House at Stanford Bishop,
the youngsters went scrumping in the nearby orchards. With such a wealth of
fruit, no one seems to have missed much.
Just how times have changed was emphasised when Jackie enquired about two little
premises at Suckley, one a shop and the other an off-licence, where she was
sent to buy provisions. John Ranford informed her that both do still exist.
Except they are now smart country homes. One exchanged hands recently for
£500,000 plus, while the, other is for rent at more than £1,000 a month. "You
could buy one of those and then you could pick hops as often as you wanted he
told June. But perhaps that was a dream for another day.
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