BACK in what passed for the middle of the summer last year, it looked as though they'd be picking the hops at Newnham Farm by submarine.

A huge swathe of the farm's 172 acres of hopyards near Tenbury Wells lay not just under water, but almost drowned by it. The river Teme and its tributary the river Rea, both of which border the hop fields, had burst their banks and in parts the floods were 6ft deep.

"I thought then we'd be lucky to survive," said farm manager Richard Powell.

"I'd never experienced anything like it; no one had, and the worry was what we would find when the floods went down."

But survive the Newnham hops did, and now they have been awarded the most cherished trophy for hop production in England, despite being flooded not once, but twice during June and July 2007.

At the Institute of Brewing and Distilling English National Hop Competition, Richard was handed the weighty Morris Hanbury Jackson Le May silver cup for the best aroma hops grown last year with a sample of Mathon Goldings.

The award dates back around 90 years and is inscribed with some of the industry's most illustrious names.

"I think if you asked anyone in the business and they were honest, this is the one trophy they would like to win," enthused Richard. "I almost can't believe it."

In fact, this year's National Hop Competition was dominated by entries from Worcestershire's Teme Valley, for Newnham Farm's neighbours, S. J. Adams and Sons at Lower House Farm, Lower Rochford - an enterprise run by four brothers and their mother - took the Fuggles hops aroma class.

"We only have 25 acres of growing hops," explained Jonathan Adams, "but we were luckier than Richard because our crop was never really flooded. Although the ground did get saturated and at one stage the hops looked really poor. But they recovered remarkably well."

It was a return to the podium for the Adams family, for they took the top award in the same Fuggles class back in 2001.

However, back in late June, as the rain hammered down, Richard Powell's concern was not growing award winning hops, but any hops at all.

Son of a farming family from Whitbourne, he has managed the farm at Newnham Bridge since it was bought by two Kent hop merchants in 1994.

"Because of its riverside position, we are used to being flooded in winter, that's part of what gives the soil its special quality," he explained. "But last summer was the first time we have been flooded out of season. The first flood came at the end of June into early July. I was concerned not only about what effect the water would have on the young hops, which were then at a quite critical stage, but also the physical impact of the floods. I had no idea how the crop, which is all suspended by strings, would stand up to the pressure of the water."

As it happened, once the waters had subsided, things were fine.

"There was some clearing up to do, a few logs, bins, stuff like that, but we seemed to have escaped lightly," he added.

The first flood was about 3ft deep, but then a couple of weeks later, the rains came again and this time they submerged the hopyards to 6ft in places.

It was a case of yesterday once more and almost unbelievably the result was the same, virtually no physical damage.

"However, the obvious difference this time was that there were areas of standing water," said Richard," and while the hops could survive the passing floods, they would be suffocated by being constantly submerged in water."

Nevertheless when harvest time came in late August/early September only two acres out of the 172 were lost.

At Newnham Farm hops are still picked the traditional way, bines hooked on to a trailer and then tractored to a stripping machine back at base, and still have families travel down from the Black Country in time honoured fashion.

"We have two shifts of 20 casual workers for the season," Richard added," and 50 per cent of them are from Dudley and the Black Country. The rest are from Poland.

"In fact the picking season was just about perfect. September's weather was very favourable and we never missed a beat. While we had really been playing catch-up all summer, it all came together just at the right moment. The crop looked fantastic."

The hops are packed in huge 70 kilo bales and samples cut out in six inch cubes.

Richard knew he might be on to something when Newnham Farm hops were enthusiastically received at the autumn's local shows, but the Morris Hanbury Jackson Le May trophy was the stuff of dreams. Then the judges looked, rubbed and sniffed and like the Man from Delmonte, they said "Yes".

"Unfortunately it's a perpetual trophy and has to go back next year," said Richard. There'll be a big gap on his sideboard when it does.