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Hop harvest below the town walls, the historic centre’s towers can be seen in the background, Žatec, around 1900

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them into picking containers, wicker handbaskets, and
back-baskets. After the container was full, hops were
handed in at the hops measure, where the hops were
poured into a container to be measured by věrtel, and
a surveyor also inspected their quality.

For every handed-in "věrtel" of hops, the hops picker
would receive a hop token. At the end of the harvest,
and sometimes during the harvest, hop tokens were
exchanged for money, while the price for one "věrtel"
was always fixed beforehand. An adept and skillful
picker could pick up to 35 to 40 "věrtels" a day. The
picked hops were put into small sacks. They were not
to be pressed or squashed, as they have a moisture
content of 80 %, and had to be taken for drying as fast
as possible.

Through the winter, the hop poles were left in the hop
fields and stored in piles of lying or standing cones or
pyramids.

The hop poles lasted for 10 to 15 years, after which time
they were usually too short and had to be replaced by
new ones. The shortening of the poles was caused by
the fact that the end embedded in the ground rotted
quickly, which is the reason why the length of the poles
had to be trimmed, according to necessity, before their Digging holes in the soil for erecting hop poles using an iron digging bar,
Saaz hop growing region, the 1 half of the 20 century
th
st