Virginia Dark Fired Tobacco Harvest

[Wudman]

I grew up on a tobacco farm here in Southern Virginia.  I didn't see a future there, so I moved on, but my Dad continues to grow a small crop of Virginia Dark Fired.  (He exited the bright leaf [cigarette tobacco] business some years back).  It is a very labor intensive crop, so the family chips in to help with the harvest.  Dad was going to retire 2 years ago when he lost his R.J. Reynolds contract (Reynolds cut much of its US production for cheaper product from Brazil), but a call from Lancaster Leaf tobacco company prompted him to plant another crop.  Virginia Dark Fired is a specialty product used primarily in cigar leaf and wrappers.  My Dad has been know for years as a premium grower.  He is still going strong at 81.



 

With this variety of tobacco, the entire stalk is harvested at one time.  We use a "draw knife" to sever the plant.  In keeping with the forum, our draw knives were made from used sawmill blades (6" bands from a local production mill).  A tool called a "spud" is placed on a stick and the tobacco stalk is shoved down on the stick for transport to the curing barn.  Our sticks are predominately hand split shortleaf pine.  Splitting follows the grain and produces a strong stick.  They are well in excess of 100 years old and have been used for generations.  We have a few sawn sticks that are either shortleaf pine of yellow poplar.  I am 54 years old and we have not procured a "new" stick in my lifetime.



 

The sticks are placed on a scaffold trailer for transport.  That's my brother in law, Tim, hanging that stick.  He is an agriculture teacher at the local high school.  Not pictured are my two sisters.  The younger is a kindergarten teacher and the older is a PhD college (ag econ) professor, that spent some time as a college dean.  



 

That's a 1965 model year 135 Massey Ferguson hooked to that trailer.  A 1965 model year Ford 5000 is behind it.  They are the two most modern tractors on the farm.  Dad bought the 5000 new in 1965.  We acquired the 135 in 1972.  Both have been rock solid through the years.



 

The tobacco is passed by hand into the barn where it is hung on tier poles to dry.That's me in the orange hat.  I am standing on a table that is about 3 feet high to pass the sticks up into the barn.  The fellow facing the camera is James.  He has been helping Dad out for years.  He is the only one in the operation that is not "blood", but he qualifies for family too.  There are two people in the barn hanging the tobacco.  This barn was built on the foundation of a hog barn that was decommissioned in 1983.  We built the tier poles high enough that we can drive a tractor through the building.  That building is 140 feet long.  The entire crop can be housed in one place.  Prior to it, we had tobacco scattered across the area.



 

This picture is standing on the ground looking straight up.  The barn is 5 tiers high.  It's about 25 feet from the ground to the top pole.  Those poles are shortleaf pine and were hand peeled with a draw knife as well.  That was a job in itself.  To hang, you straddle from pole to pole.  I hung about 600 sticks the other day for the first time in ages.  I had some muscles aching that I had forgotten about.



 

That's a view of tobacco hanging in the barn with a couple of trailers parked in there as well.



 

That's a view looking down the length of the barn.  





This variety is cured with wood smoke.  It produces a dark colored flavorful leaf.  Dad actually likes green sweetgum butts to produce smoke.  You build your fires beside them and add wood over time.  That sweetgum butt will smolder and smoke for days.



 

That's Dad building fires in the barn.  We use fatwood (lighterwood, litewood, fat pine) to start the fires and oak or hickory for the most part.  There was a pecan on the trailer.  As a forestry site prep contractor, Dad has an assortment of drip torches.  That is not standard farm issue, but comes in pretty handy.  Once all the fires are burning, you close up your doors and let her smoke.  In this big barn, fires are left open.  In the lower hanging barns, we would lay tin over the fire to keep it smothered.

When dry, the tobacco is removed from the barn and sent to the pack house where the leaves are stripped off the stalk and graded.  In the old days, it was hand tied and delivered to market in hogsheads.  Today, it is packed in cardboard boxes.  Historically, everything was sold in open auction.  Auction day at the tobacco market was a social event.  Today everything is sold on contract.  If you make grade, you know your price.  There aren't many folks still producing this variety.  Dad is already planning on next year.

Wud  

[snobdds]

As a guy from Wyoming, I had no idea how tobacco is grown, harvested, or cured. 

Very interesting. 

[btulloh]

That's a really nice documentary Wud.  Thanks for taking time to post that. 

Wouldn't mind seeing an overall picture of the barn from the outside if you feel so inclined. 

[hacknchop]

That was very educational and interesting,thank you for showing us how tobacco is harvested. Your father  is a great example of how to make America great, work.

[Resonator]

Reminds me of one of my neighbors, he was farming well into his 80's when a stroke made him retire. Watching him work and listening to him tell stories, I'd get a sense of the sheer determination it took to get the work done, and keep everything running 7 days a week. 

[JohnW]

Yip, that looks pretty labor intensive.  That's an amazing amount of tobacco.

One of my friends told me that hanging tobacco in the barn, when he was a kid, convinced him that he wanted to steer clear of an occupation that involved manual labor.

[Don P]

I had to carefully time visits to my cousins  :D  Wudman didn't mention the surprise snake that always seemed to be up there somewhere.

I was working in southern WI and was surprised when I saw tobacco. I asked around and was told they were growing cigar wrappers.

Both sides of my family grew flue cured bright leaf. When we moved up here it is burley tobacco, harvested and hung much the same as yours but not smoked.

About the old MF's "If you don't overrev it, it'll outlast your grandchildren".

[Southside]

It wasn't in the barn but Wud did save a King snake this weekend.  He (Wud) sure has some moves.   :D

[VB-Milling]

Thank you so much for posting this @Wudman !

I was just telling my wife and son about my broad leaf tobacco picking days as a kid/teenager in CT in the 90s.  I started when I was 10 or 11 and stopped when I went off to college at 18.  My son is going to be 12 this week and, despite my best efforts, wouldn't know a day's work if it came out of his phone screened and slapped him.

At least now I have some visuals to show them.  The process is similar to what you have posted.

So many similar experiences to what you have described.  I worked for a small family operation.  50's era tractors, walking the shed poles.  I was the guy who went to the top of the shed because I was young, flexible and lighter than all the grown men.  I think their trust of the aging shed beams expired sometime in the 70s, and with it, any desire to be 25ft up in the shed on 98 degree days with no ventilation.

The shed was where I learned a lot about life and being a man.  Most of the time, the two other guys would forget I was up there and just blindly hand me the sticks of 6 plants.  We called them lath.  On occasion, the person hooking the plants on the trailer in the field would pull too hard and break a lath.  Without fail, the farm owner Norm would say "What the heck is wrong with you?  Don't you know those are antiques!"  He would always put them aside and during lunch, we'd pull the iron hooks out and he'd put them in an old coffee can.  "I'll saw up some new lath over the winter" he'd say....7 years....never saw any new lath....just the ever-growing amount of hooks in the coffee can.

Your post and writing my response and having those memories just made my day, so thank you.

[Wudman]

The snakes don't concern much, but I have seen a man jump from the top when he laid his hand on a big black snake up there.  The red wasp get my attention.

Wud

[thecfarm]

Not much tobacco grown around here. 
Thanks for the story.

[Ron Scott]

Yes, interesting!

[Roxie]

When you said that Lancaster Leaf Company called, would that be in Lancaster Pennsylvania?  If so, that would be where all our Amish contracts go.  They do it identical to what you're doing but with horses and very large families. They do however strip the tobacco during the winter months by size of the leaf and it's delivered in tied bales.

One of my fondest childhood memories is my grandfathers tobacco farm in the hills of Sparta North Carolina.  There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, the outhouse was behind the house and  up the hill. There was a pump in the yard to bring in water and refrigeration was a small stone building over one of the springs. Children that misbehaved were  tossed in the spring to teach you something.  Everything came from the farm with the exception of biyearly trips to the town to get kerosene, sugar, and occasionally flour, and grandpa's case of beer.  There was a cow for milk, two pigs a year, and free range chicken before a free range chicken was cool. There was no motorized vehicle on the place, no car, no tractor. Grandpa plowed using a one-man plow and if we were there, he had a hitch he made for the cow and one of us would lead the cow for him. Hay was cut with a scythe and forked on hand made wagons we would pull and forked loose into the loft.

The above mentioned wagons were  what we pulled when he cut the tobacco. He would cut the stalk off and then remove the leaves in the field lay the leaves on the wagons.  The leaves were then taken to the women and they would string them with wire each leaf separately on the wire and attach it to the poles. The remainder of the hanging process is identical to Wudman's. He didn't smoke his but popped the side slats out to dry. His tobacco was always picked up by the company and he just dropped the loose leaves into a pile and tied bundles with baling twine.

Pest control is everything with tobacco and that again was us. You'd take a hoe with you and a sardine tin that had a few spoons of kerosene and bugs went in the tin, worms were crushed by bare feet and you just moved down the rows. We loved it and we loved him and those conversations out in the fields whether you were talking or just listening are among the most humorous and educational a kid could have.

I totally understand the Amish shunning modern convenience and slowing down life.

Thanks for bringing back those memories Wudman.

[WDH]

In the summer of 1976, I worked as an intern for Weyerhaeuser based out of New Bern, NC.  Tobacco fields everywhere.  Some of the guys would come after the weekend with yellow stained hands after "working tobacco".  

[Tom King]

That's the way my Wife's Grandfather raised it, and she helped when she was little.  The whole family pitched in at harvest.

Tobacco was not only the main cash crop in Virginia, during Colonial times, but was also used as currency.  You paid your property taxes in tobacco, and traded it for things like horses.  You were required to attend church, Church of England, every two weeks, and there was a required tithe of a pound, and a half of tobacco.  If you missed a Sunday, you had to pay five pounds the next Sunday.  Prayers included pledges of loyalty to the King, and your betters.

In those colonial times, three acres was considered the typical maximum that one person, including slaves, could produce.  The large farms had big wooden screw things that packed it into hogsheads (barrels) to ship off.  You weren't paid in cash for it, but it was shipped off the England, the only place you were allowed to sell it to, and you didn't know what you would get back for it.  You sent a list of things you needed to an agent, and after the next years crop was in the ground, you would receive some of what you had asked for.

I have one friend whose family raises 6,000 acres of tobacco every year.  Their family has had the land since the Crown was giving it away in the early 1700's. None of it is touched by hands. Rows are the exact length to fill a harvester, and it goes directly into bulk barns.  They used to sell it at auction, but now it's in contract to Japanese buyers.  The buyers send their Japanese inspectors, and it's loaded directly out of the bulk barns into shipping containers.  Their propane bill for drying is over one million a year.

I'm glad I have never smoked.

[Wudman]

When you said that Lancaster Leaf Company called, would that be in Lancaster Pennsylvania?  If so, that would be where all our Amish contracts go.  They do it identical to what you're doing but with horses and very large families. They do however strip the tobacco during the winter months by size of the leaf and it's delivered in tied bales.

One of my fondest childhood memories is my grandfathers tobacco farm in the hills of Sparta North Carolina.  There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, the outhouse was behind the house and  up the hill. There was a pump in the yard to bring in water and refrigeration was a small stone building over one of the springs. Children that misbehaved were  tossed in the spring to teach you something.  Everything came from the farm with the exception of biyearly trips to the town to get kerosene, sugar, and occasionally flour, and grandpa's case of beer.  There was a cow for milk, two pigs a year, and free range chicken before a free range chicken was cool. There was no motorized vehicle on the place, no car, no tractor. Grandpa plowed using a one-man plow and if we were there, he had a hitch he made for the cow and one of us would lead the cow for him. Hay was cut with a scythe and forked on hand made wagons we would pull and forked loose into the loft.

The above mentioned wagons were  what we pulled when he cut the tobacco. He would cut the stalk off and then remove the leaves in the field lay the leaves on the wagons.  The leaves were then taken to the women and they would string them with wire each leaf separately on the wire and attach it to the poles. The remainder of the hanging process is identical to Wudman's. He didn't smoke his but popped the side slats out to dry. His tobacco was always picked up by the company and he just dropped the loose leaves into a pile and tied bundles with baling twine.

Pest control is everything with tobacco and that again was us. You'd take a hoe with you and a sardine tin that had a few spoons of kerosene and bugs went in the tin, worms were crushed by bare feet and you just moved down the rows. We loved it and we loved him and those conversations out in the fields whether you were talking or just listening are among the most humorous and educational a kid could have.

I totally understand the Amish shunning modern convenience and slowing down life.

Thanks for bringing back those memories Wudman.

Lancaster Leaf is in Lancaster, PA.  It is one in the same.  They have a receiving station here in Kenbridge, VA.  I am just old enough to remember my Grandaddy having mules in the field.  He was producing brightleaf flu cured (used in cigarettes) at the time.  The mule would stay with the "pullers" (the folks removing the tobacco from the stalk).  When his ground slide was full, you could point him to the barn and he would go by himself.  The people at the barn would unhook him, hook him to an empty and send him back.  As the mules aged, they would be used in the field but a tractor (8N Ford) would transport the tobacco from the field to the barn.  Those same mules skidded a few logs in their day.  
You mention that your Amish neighbors are baling their tobacco.  Through the years, we progressed from hand tying to baling to boxes.  I think the boxes allow them to pack more product into their warehouse.  Nice uniform cubes are easier to pack and stack than the bales.
It was somewhat of a trip down memory lane for me as well.  I made a right off that lane years ago.  Those 18 hour days and chasing day labor pointed me in a different direction.  The government is not a tobacco growers friend either.  :(    

Wud

[samandothers]

When I was a co-op student in '80,'81 working in  South Boston Va I would help a guy out around his farm after work.  He had some tobacco so I'd help when my work sessions over lapped the tobacco season.  Fortunately I was there when it was time to plant and not pull the tobacco!  Planting was pretty easy, ride on the planter pulled by the tractor and feed in the plants as the machine placed them!  Tobacco as a cash crop has really dropped off!

Enjoyed the other stories! 

[metalspinner]

Wonderful story and thread, Wudman!
That picture of the tobacco hanging in the barn is beautiful. 

[Roxie]

It sure is a small world. Every February I drive Amish neighbors up to Quarryville to sign their contracts with Lancaster Leaf. 

Cigarettes will soon be the new crypto currency. 

In addition to all the above work mentioned, tobacco plants have to be topped or they'll go to seed.  I wish I had a dime for every top I've cut. 

[21incher]

Thanks for sharing a great educational story for those of us that have never seen a harvest before. 

[Old saw fixer]

     I learned to tie dark tobacco back in the 60's helping a friend's folks.  Over Southside's way in Wilsons. 

[mike_belben]

My son is going to be 12 this week and, despite my best efforts, wouldn't know a day's work if it came out of his phone screened and slapped him.

Im trying so hard to keep gadgets out of my kids hands and this is why.  Boy is a worker but daughter is quite lazy. 
Were you around enfield area?  Lots of tobacco up there. 

[VB-Milling]

My son is going to be 12 this week and, despite my best efforts, wouldn't know a day's work if it came out of his phone screened and slapped him.

Im trying so hard to keep gadgets out of my kids hands and this is why.  Boy is a worker but daughter is quite lazy.
Were you around enfield area?  Lots of tobacco up there.

Close Mike!  But no cigar  :D :D :D

West Suffield

[VB-Milling]

Some of the guys would come after the weekend with yellow stained hands after "working tobacco".  

Ah yes.  Took a few showers and hand washings to get that off.  No one ever wore gloves come to think of it.  Nowadays, people wear gloves to put the 2ft x 2ft piece of plywood from the Home Depot cart into their Prius. 

[mike_belben]

Close Mike!  But no cigar  :D :D :D

West Suffield

we're the same age, and i was raised in ludlow. ive snuck around DOT on 187 and 202 many times.