Some women hate football season, or hunting season, or you name it season. I hate tobacco season. And the problem is tobacco season runs a good 7 months.
Tobacco is an extremely labor-intensive crop. You seed the greenhouse by putting this tiny little tobacco seed into this tiny little square on this styrofoam bed that will be put into pools of water in the greenhouse. That is done in March. The plants will be ready for transplant in May. That’s probably the easiest part.
In May you’ve got to round up 4 to 6 people to help set tobacco. This job isn’t too bad. 4 people sit on the back of a transplanter and take plants out of those styrofoam beds and put them into a butterfly clip that places the plant into the ground. It’s tedious, monotonous work. But because there are 4 of you it can be a lot of fun. The other 2 people walk behind the setter to replant any plants that need it and to keep the setters in plants. Riding the setter gives you a good opportunity to get a good suntan. Of course, it’s just on your face, your shoulders and the front of your legs. Most of the time your knees are a bright, crispy, red. Buy it is fun. Even when you work from sun up to sundown it’s fun.
And really for the next few weeks it’s not that hard. Unless you have to hoe the tobacco. There are a couple of reasons why you have to hoe tobacco. One might be to spread dirt up around the plant. The plant needs the nutrients in the dirt to grow. So sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you have to air out the dirt surrounding the plant. You just have to break up the dirt around the plant to do that. But sometimes there are grasses and weeds in the patch and you’ve got to get rid of those. I always thought that those had to be removed because you didn’t want the eyesores in your field. But the real reason is that they take nutrients out of the soil too and you need all of the nutrients to go to the plant. Let me tell you this, hoeing tobacco is back-breaking work. It’s awful. If I had to make my living hoeing tobacco I would be poor. It’s work you don’t wish on your worst enemy. As long as the tobacco is small you can plow the field to accomplish everything but hoeing weeds and grasses. When it starts to get too big you just pray that there’s not a lot of rain because of it doesn’t rain those weeds and grasses won’t grow. Of course the tobacco won’t grow either but I’ll get to that another day.
Once the plants are big enough then they will bud out to a flower. A tobacco plant has the most beautiful flower. Most farmers hate those though. Flowers are not their friends. You see, the flower takes the nutrients away from the leaves. The leaves are where the money is. So, off with their heads! Literally. A crew goes through the tobacco patch breaking the flower off of the plant, or topping the plant. They will also put an oil on the stem of the plant to retard a flower from growing back. Because that is the next step, suckering. That process is pulling any and all new growths off of that plant. This is done continually until the plant is ready to be cut. That can take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks. Topping, oiling, and suckering are hard, dirty jobs. The plants at this time are anywhere from waist high to chest high. The plants are sticky with tobacco gum. This is usually done in July and August so it’s hot. It’s not hard work, just tedious. And depending on how much tobacco you have you can be in the field from sun up to sundown. The good news is that there’s not much hoeing that needs to be done.
And then it’s time to cut tobacco. This is hard work. This is long work. And it’s very dirty work.
The crew now goes through the field, cutting the tobacco plant off at the base of the stalk and lying it onto the ground. After the plant has had a chance to wilt it is spiked onto a tobacco stick along with 5 of its neighbors. Once the tobacco is all spiked then it is loaded on scaffold wagons to be take to the barn.
Again depending on the amount of tobacco you have depends on how long it takes to cut tobacco. But it’s a long, drawn out and dirty job. This is the part of growing tobacco that separates the men from the boys. It’s hard work. I tried to cut tobacco one time and butchered the plant. From that point on my jobs have ranged from dropping sticks to driving the tractor to handing plants up for someone else to spike (that really sucks) to moving empty scaffold wagons in place and moving full ones to the barns to making sure everybody stayed fed either with lunch or supper, depending on how long they were out in the field. But if you’re not out in the field working you could go days without seeing your significant other.
And you think you’re done, right?
Wrong.
Because then you have to house the tobacco and cure it. We grow air-cured and dark-fired tobacco. The air-cured is pretty easy. As long as you don’t get too much rain while it’s curing, the air does all of the work. There are times the farmer will open or close the doors to the barn but mostly they just wait for it to cure out. It’s dark fired tobacco that is so much work.
With dark fired tobacco you house the tobacco just like you do burley or air cured. But this tobacco needs to be in a better barn than the air-cured. The barn has to have doors that close. The barn doesn’t have to be airtight but pretty close. That’s because you’re going to build fires in those barns to “fire” the tobacco. What, you may ask. That’s right. You’re going to build fires in the barns.
Usually the floors in the barns are dug out a little. A layer of slabs is put down in the dirt. A slab is like a board of lumber. Usually, we buy slabs from sawmills and they are the trimmings or bad boards. These are layered down on the ground in the barn and then covered in sawdust. Huh, you may ask. Yep, sawdust. The sawdust will smolder and smoke. It’s the smoke and the heat that cures dark-fired tobacco. And the best dark-fired tobacco has a lot of smoke on it. You can actually see the smoke; you can actually rub it off. It’s pretty cool actually.
A farmer will “fire” his barns three or four times depending on how much smoke he is looking for. The barns will be fired for about a week and then redone. The bad thing about all of this is that the farmer will check the barns a lot while they are being fired to make sure that leaves or sticks of tobacco don’t fall out of the barn and start the structure on fire. That is something you definitely don’t want. Most of these barns are wood and they will go up in a heart beat. And nothing is sadder than to watch a barn with all of your year’s work go up in flames. I have seen Jimmy get into a barn and sit for the entire day just to make sure that nothing is going to happen to that barn. He might do that because the weather didn’t cooperate and he needs to fire a barn really hot. They have to watch a really hot barn, close. But the problem with doing that is that he sits in a closed barn full of smoke. I have tried and tried to convince him that he could die from smoke inhalation. He knows that but it’s something that has to be done. I tease him that he’s never been a smoker but will probably die from lung cancer from being in tobacco barns for all these years.
Now you wait. You wait for the weather to be perfect. Or you wait for the weather to be okay. Or you wait until you can force that tobacco down.
Once it has cured out you need moisture in the air, or warm weather, to bring the tobacco down. You need moisture in the air because normally the tobacco will be dry hanging in the barn. The moisture in the air, or the forced moisture (think steamer) makes the tobacco pliable again and it won’t crumble from the barn into the stripping room. Yes, I did say stripping room. The stripping room is where you take the tobacco on the sticks, still on the stalks. This is where you take it to strip it off of the stalks. You pile it up and then you have one or two people “grade” the tobacco. This requires you to take the less than perfect leaves off of the stalk and leave the good ones there to be stripped off. Personally,I have never figured out “culling” tobacco. But the people who are good at it, are really good at it. My job has always been to strip the remaining good leaves off the stalk and place them neatly in a box to be baled. Years ago the tobacco leaves were “tied” into a “hand” of tobacco. There was an art to that. It’s very rare for a tobacco company to want tied tobacco. Most of them accept the bales. Some of them have you put it into large boxes. But it is baled in those boxes. Those boxes usually weigh hundreds of pounds.
Have patience, we’re almost done. Once you have a load of tobacco then you get to haul it off to the company and pickup the check. Years ago most tobacco was sold at auction. It was a subsidized crop. The government mandated how much tobacco could be grown. This was good for the farmer because you couldn’t just go out and grow all that you wanted. It kept the prices high. The government would subsidize it by buying tobacco that wasn’t bought on the auction floor. They would hold it until the tobacco companies needed extra and would buy it at a discount or premium, depending on the availability. But about 10 years ago the government got out of the subsidy business. Now, most farmers sell directly to a manufacturer. The quality of tobacco is much better and those that grew an acre or two have gotten out of the market.
My father-in-law said that tobacco was a “proud crop”. He said that you are proud when you get it set, you are proud when you get it cut, and you are really proud when you deliver the crop and pick up your check. I believe that it is a proud crop. I also believe that it is a dying art. It is going to the wayside like growing sorghum to make molasses, curing country hams and tons of other talents that our ancestors had that our children will never experience. As much as I hate to see it end, I’m also really proud when our last load has gone to the manufacturer in December and we don’t have to do anything again until March. I tease Jimmy that he gets off 4 months a year. That’s good because he’ll work 60 to 80 hours a week the rest of the year. I’m sure it all sorts itself out.
But when it’s over I get him back. And I can’t wait for that time of year.