The midday lunch was taken beneath the shade of the nearest tree, or, in case the pickers were boarded by the grower, all adjourned to the largest room in an out-building, where a rural feast was spread with no niggard hand. Hop-pickers expect to live on the fat of the farmer's land, and as a rule they are not disappointed. Whole sheep and beeves vanish like manna before the Israelites in the short three weeks of the picking season, while gallons of coffee, firkins of butter, barrels of flour, and sugar by the hundred weight are swallowed up in the capacious maw of the small army. The nightly hop-dance used to be an indispensable adjunct of the picking season, much counted upon by the gay throng, but rather frowned upon, as an occasion of scandal, by staid and proper seniors.
MAP OF OTSEGO LAKE
With the great increase in hop-production during the early 'eighties, the romance of hop-picking, on many farms, gave place to a picturesque but undesirable invasion of vagabondage from the large cities. Some farmers continued to choose their pickers from among the better sort of young men and maidens of the neighborhood, but many large growers, requiring a great number of hands for a short season, resorted to the unemployed of neighboring cities, and the result was an annual immigration from Albany, Troy, Binghamton, and other cities farther north, which taxed the capacity of the railways. Among these workers many were honest and capable, but a large part of them were attracted by the prospect of three weeks of board and lodging, with an amount of pay which, if small, was sufficient for a glorious spree. It became the custom in Cooperstown to augment the village police force during the hop-picking season, for city thugs were likely to be abroad, and when the pickers were paid off their revels were apt to become both obnoxious and dangerous.
Hops will be seen growing in the summer along the shores and hillsides of Otsego Lake, so long as beer is made; for, aside from the very limited amount required to leaven bread, and the comparatively small amount used in druggists' preparations, there is no use for hops except in the making of beer. But never again will there be in Otsego such luxuriance of hop-culture as that which developed in the 'eighties before the Pacific coast learned to compete successfully with the hop-growers of New York State.
Hop-culture is a gamble which in Otsego county has made fortunes for some farmers and brought ruin to others. The growth of the product is singularly at the mercy of freaks of weather, and its preparation for the market is beset by many possibilities of failure. It is a crop of which it is most difficult to count the final cost, or to predictthe market price. It has varied in price more than any other product of the soil. In 1878 the entire crop was marketed at from five to twelve cents a pound. But for many years every farmer in Otsego remembered the season of 1882-83, when the average cost of producing a pound of hops was ten cents, and hops were selling at a dollar a pound, so that, as was said at the time, "five pounds of hops could be exchanged for a barrel of flour."[126] Many farmers made money at this time, but some held their hops for an even higher price, and lost. One farmer held thousands of pounds of hops in his great barn, and kept buying in the crops of other farmers, awaiting a price of $1.20, at which he had resolved to sell. Two years later the hops were still in the barn, and nine-tenths of their value was lost. There were other tragedies of this sort, yet for years afterward, while some continued to grow hops at a fair profit, many a farmer in the vicinity of Cooperstown, lured by the hope of a dollar-a-pound season, was kept on the verge of poverty by his faith in the golden vine.
Otsego Lake is chiefly famous as the scene of events in two of Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales. There are glimpses of it in The Pioneers, while in The Deerslayer the whole action revolves about this lake, which throughout the story is called the "Glimmerglass." The scenes of incidents in these two tales are still pointed out on Otsego Lake, and have become as much a part of its history as of its romance.
