Living in London means the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are everywhere. They’re visible through the windows of closed pubs, on the faces of people queuing for food, on the bare tarmac of the empty roads. On a shoot at Hukins Hops, I learned the impact of the pandemic is harder to spot in rural areas—but it’s still there, it’s still everywhere.
On the surface, life goes on as normal. Nature waits for no one and the harvest had to happen, somehow. Generally, managing director Ross Hukin doesn’t employ any British workers, because they can’t cope with the 4 a.m. starts and 12-hour physical days, he says. This year, however, he had to. That’s how I found myself in a field in the middle of Kent with a new understanding of how COVID-19 touches everything.
Tom was a chef at a good restaurant at the start of the year. He lost his job very early on, and spent much of the summer wondering what to do. Hop picking appealed because he could finish by mid-afternoon and be out in the sun for once, and Hukin took him on because he’d been used to the long, hot hours in the kitchen. He lives a long way from the farm, so sleeps on an air mattress in his van—or at least he did until it burst. At the time I met him he had no idea what he’d do after the harvest, but had no intention of going back to the cutthroat world of cheffing.
I think of him quite a bit, even months later, and wonder how many others there must be just like him. On the day I was there he was on floor duty, hacking away at the lower branches of the vines and hoovering up what the tractor missed—like a bird following a harvester spreading seeds.
Words + Photoby Jonny Garrett