In an essay titled “Thanks for the Hops” by Peter Harder that I dug up at the Chilliwack Archives, he talks about the life of the Mennonites on the hop yards.
Most of the Mennonite workers were from Yarrow and Harder stated that they were a rather insular ethnic group (the women were required to wear long dresses in the fields). However, he stated that the world was opening up. “Mennonites continued to work in the hopyards, even through World War II and beyond, when some war refugees counted themselves lucky to find employment there”. He also stated that hop field work was always some sort of controversy, individuals from the Mennonite Brethren Church which did not countenance alcohol, sometimes rationalized that the hops they picked were only used for yeast.
Harder goes on to quote long time minister of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Johann Harder “whatever God lets grow in this world,” he said, “I will work with”.
This really shows how dedicated Mennonite workers were to their religions beliefs and their hard work on the hop farms.
