Growers

When half-a-century had ticked over since Robert Inglis first started growing hops, he’d not long celebrated one of his own significant birthdays - but he’d barely given change a thought, let alone the idea of selling Northwood Hop Farm. So, when the government-owned Super Fund proposed adding the 85-hectare property to its horticultural investment portfolio, Robert says he had no intention of turning his back on the industry. Just as passionate about growing hops as he was as a teenager, Robert has readily taken time away from his aviation business, Originair in Nelson, to advise or assist as required with...

Training young hops to wend their way skyward is not a comfortable job when you’re a 6’4” tall lad.  Fresh out of high school in 2011, Dylan Morris was given the choice of two jobs at KONO Horticulture in Motueka – he could either thin apple trees or tend newly-planted hop bines. He didn’t hesitate. He chose to start his hop-growing career. “It’s an exciting industry and, for me, growing hops was a completely new challenge with a lot to learn,” he says. “I grew up in Tapawera where all my holiday jobs were in some sort of farming or...

Colin Oldham wasn’t particularly surprised when America’s Budweiser Beer magnate managed to find his relatively small hop farm, tucked away in a pretty valley south of Nelson. When it comes to big business world-wide, the hop-growing industry is very small, he says, and at the time, Colin Oldham’s ‘New Hoplands’ property was the only place in the world where one could find substantial gardens of organically-grown hops. The multi-billionaire beer baron, August Busch III, now aged 82, and his son August Busch IV, (yes, the family’s generations are numbered like royalty), took a guided tour of Colin’s farm, flanked by...

When Brent McGlashen was just a primary school boy, every day after school during the hop harvest, he would race his three siblings home – the quickest one to throw down their bicycle and run into the hop shed nabbing the pick of the afternoon jobs. “Dad paid us fifty cents an hour and, being kids, we thought that was pretty big money,” Brent remembers. “We’d work until about six o’clock, then it was home for dinner and homework before bed. But, as we got older, Mum had to lay down some rules about what time we came home -...

The very first time Willy Macdonald noticed numerous little hop burrs forming on the bines, he jumped onto his farm-bike and raced back to the farmhouse, excitedly calling out to his wife - “Edi! – quickly, come and see what has happened!”  “She got onto the bike with me and I took her out to the hop garden to see what had grown virtually overnight. We were like little kids,” Willy laughs. “When the burrs developed into hop cones, it was just as exciting and I went to fetch Edi again.” “Some mornings, Willy will come out to the kitchen to...