ny.

Cooperstown has a winter harvest-time, in January or February, when ice
is cut from the lake for the summer supply. This industry occupies a
large force of men, with plows, saws, hooks, crowbars, horses and
bob-sleds, for several weeks. The ice taken from Otsego Lake, from ten
to twenty inches thick, according to the severity of the winter, is
always pure as mountain dew, and clear as crystal.

The midsummer view of Otsego Lake at one time included, in the clearings
along the western shore and hillsides, a great luxuriance of hop-vines.
The golden wreaths of hops, as they hang ripening in the August
sunshine, sweeping in graceful clusters from the tall poles, or swinging
in the breeze in umbrella-like canopies, add a more picturesque feature
to the landscape than any other growing crop.

Hops have a part in the story of Cooperstown, which was at one time the
centre of the most important hop-growing industry in America. Hop
culture was introduced into Otsego county about the year 1830. In 1845
only 168,605 pounds were produced. In 1885, within a radial distance of
forty miles from Cooperstown was included more than half of the
hop-producing region of the United States.

[Illustration: _Elizabeth Hudson_

HOP PICKING]

The hop-picking season, during the latter part of August, has given a
picturesque character of its own to the life of the village and
environs. In the primitive days of the industry, when the harvesting of
the crop did not require any additional help from outside of the
immediate region, the task of hop-picking was lightened by the enjoyment
of social pleasures and romantic excitements that came to be associated
with it by the young people of Otsego. At the beginning of the picking
season, in those days, anyone passing through the country would meet
wagon after wagon, of the style known as a "democrat," loaded down with
gay and lively maidens, with one or two young men to each load. On
reaching the hop-yard to which they were assigned, these frolicsome
parties exchanged their holiday attire for broad-rimmed hats and
working dresses. Boxes were placed about the hop-yard, four pickers to
each, the boxes being divided into four sections holding ten bushels
apiece, and into these were dropped the clusters picked from the vines
by nimble fingers. Experienced hands can fill two or more boxes in a
day, for which as much as fifty cents a box used to be paid.

The midday lunch was taken beneath the shad