Poem: "Picking Hops"

From an August 1861 Frontier Palladium, this poem evokes the poet's desire for hearth and home versus duty to fight during the American Civil War. 

Langdon's Earliana Tomatoes

From Historical Sketches of Franklin County, New York (1918) by Frederick J. Seaver, p.263:

The soil [in the town of Constable], though generally light, is rich and heavy in a few localities. Market gardening is practiced successfully and upon a large scale, especially by Herbert P. Langdon & Son, successors to Fayette Langdon & Son, who entered upon the business some fifteen years ago. Their first venture was melon raising, which was successful for a time, but latterly has been a failure, and therefore abandoned. At present the concern's specialties are early cabbages, early corn, early tomatoes, onions, sweet peppers, etc. Of corn they market forty to fifty thousand cars in a season, and of tomatoes eight hundred to a thousand bushels. Most of their products are shipped to summer hotels in the Adirondacks at fancy prices, though considerable quantities are sold in Malone also. They have developed a particularly early and fine tomato, called the Langdon Strain of Earlianas, from the most carefully selected specimens of which they put up large quantities of seeds for sale to seedsmen. For the choicest of these seeds they have no difficulty in disposing of all they raise at five dollars per ounce, with other grades selling at varying figures down to sixty cents per ounce. They had a contract in 1916, outside of the Earliana seed, to furnish a large house with all of the seed from two acres that were cultivated solely for this purpose. Their tomato seeds alone brought them two thousand four hundred dollars in 1915!

From the Weekly Market Grower's Journal, January 20, 1912:

From The Southern Planter, January 1911:

Hops Ad

From the Sept. 11, 1885 Franklin Gazette

Hops

As most folks know, one of Franklin County's bygone agricultural crops is hops (used mostly in the brewing of beer).  New York State was the predominant supplier of domestic hops from 1840 through the turn of the century, when the bulk of American hops production moved to the Pacific Northwest.  The northern portion of Franklin County is well-suited for hops cultivation, and the county was well-known for its large yield and high quality hops.  In 1880, Franklin County produced over 1 million pounds. 

Harvest-time (late August/early September) brought a few days of good wages for the hop-pickers and into the local economy.  Hops are grown on vines, which need to be twined around a pole or line.  At harvest time, the poles were uprooted or the vertical lines cut from their overhead stringers and the long vines laid across a large wood hop box, where the buds were plucked from the vines.  Large bags of hops were then taken to the drying kiln -- a large barn with a ventilated roof and stoves on the lower level and an upper drying floor.   The dried hops were gathered into bales and purchased by hop-brokers to be taken by railroad (after 1850) to New York City and other locations.

Image from the "Franklin Historical Review," Vol. 12 (1973)

Commercial hop production was an exceptionally speculative business, with wide fluctuations in price per pound.  The local newspapers reported on anticipated crop yield, local and state prices per pound, and how the overseas market would affect the domestic market.  The Sept. 11, 1885 Franklin Gazette column read:

click to enlarge

The "Hop Gossip" column in the Malone Palladium of Aug. 24, 1893 commented on the hop crops of other New York counties, Germany, and England, and reported instances of blight, pests and rainy weather which all affected yield and, therefore, prices.  The column goes on to say:

The speculative nature of the business, blight, Prohibition and the lack of laborers all contributed to the decline of hop cultivation in Franklin County.  The last commercial crop was grown in 1965 by Earl Looker whose farm was near Whippleville.

Some interesting resources:
-  Farmer's Museum blog post on Hops in the Pharmacy
-  "Growing Hops in New England" by Dr. Leonard Perry, Plant and Soil Science Dept. University of Vermont
-  "A Search for Economic Alternatives:  Hops in Franklin County, New York During the Nineteenth Century" by  Thomas A. Rumney, Professor of Geography, Plattsburgh State University
-  Adirondack Almanack blog post on hops
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