Blast from the past- old tobacco barn

[Redbow]

I always like the pictures of old tobacco barns, thanks for posting them. I spent a lot of time in my younger days working in and around those barns and of course harvesting the tobacco from the fields. Long days of tough work suckering, topping, chopping, cropping, grading, tying, stacking, and everything else that went with raising tobacco back in my early life.

Around our area there are quite a few old tobacco barns that have been pretty well preserved over the years. We called the tie horse a looping horse as everyone here always referred to putting the green tobacco on a stick, looping tobacco..It sure was fun to hang two barns of tobacco after a hard day of cropping the stuff and getting it to the barn hands for looping..Then as someone said getup at 3-4 am and take out two barns of tobacco, stack it in the pack house, get breakfast then head to the fields to harvest two or three more barns of the green terror, just depending on how heavy it came off the stalk that week..And while you were cropping you killed every tobacco worm that you saw. Grading tobacco in the fall and getting it ready for market wasn't so bad, actually for me that was one of the easiest jobs with processing tobacco. We had to sort out the leaves into the 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade and then the trash . My Grandpa and another man who worked and grew tobacco would sometimes load up a dual wheeled truck, cover the tobacco with a tarp and head out for Georgia to sell their crop because tobacco was bringing more in Georgia that in NC that year. I guess the 4 day trip was worth it back then, a farmer needed every penny he could earn in those days.. To this day and I am 70 years old I do not miss working in tobacco...My Grandpa's old tobacco barn was a log structure, wood fired and with logs for tear poles also. The round poles were very slick and one had to be careful while hanging the tobacco not to fall off them. I still see some chinking left in the old pole barn in the picture, I have helped my Grandpa chink the tobacco barn many times in the past..I doubt there is much left of my Grandpa's old log tobacco barn now I haven't seen it in many years. Last time I was there it was in bad shape, rotting away with time..

I lived and worked in SC for 35 years, been to Mullins SC many times, used to live just outside Marion SC...

 

[BriarPatch99]

Redbow mention "chinking" ... That was a job we usually did the first of May ....there was an old clay pit that held some really sticky gray modly clay that was perfect chinking ...

Climbing the inside of the barn ...using the slick tier poles to climb ... We'd drag a ten quart bucket up the sides .... poking that clay into any spot between the logs that the clay had tell out ...

The barns were a falling rock zone as anytime a chunk of that clay could fall out ....I never got hit by any but have had it not very close to my head a time of two .... It was hard as cement after being cooked with the heat ....

 

[fishingtiger]

Really neat stories here! Working primarily in the warehouse, I miss the smell of tobacco that filled the town for about 4 months every year. We sold tobacco Mon-Thursday. My jobs included helping unload the farmers trucks and laying out the tobacco in rows for sale. On days we sold, I walked along with the sale up and down each row, my job was to be able to quickly dig out the tickets for each pile of tobacco so that the ticket marker could write down the proper sale price. I was around 6 or 7 years old when I started helping on the sale. It was pretty cool hearing that constant hum of the auctioneer, my grandfather (warehouse owner) beating up the buyers to bid higher and the jockeying between the buyers when we would hit a particularly high grade of tobacco. The farmers were always watching intently to see how the sale was going. Many of them would bring their entire family to town that day for the sale. Pretty crazy but the small town of Mullins SC was booming during tobacco times. Now it is pretty much a boarded up ghost town.

 

[Oldstick]

Ya'll have me beat. I have seen plenty of those barns and heard many tales growing up in South GA, but by the time I was 16 or so, the farmers I worked for were using the metal gas fired "bulk barns". And I am pushing 60 this year.

 

[Nicodemus]

Ya'll have me beat. I have seen plenty of those barns and heard many tales growing up in South GA, but by the time I was 16 or so, the farmers I worked for were using the metal gas fired "bulk barns". And I am pushing 60 this year.

One of my Uncles got one of those new bulk barns. That thing gave him fits the first year or two till he got the hang of it. He couldn`t get the heat right or something and always ended up with a lot of "swelled stems" . I`ve seen the auctioneer and the buyers tear a sheet apart if they found swelled stems in a sheet of baccer.

 

[rvick]

I pulled the sled with a mule from the field to the barn and I'm talking about the old narrow sleds (1 leaf wide) the handers would get ill about me turning over those sleds when I made the mule run around a sharp corner. Then with progress came the wide sleds (2 leaves wide).

 

[KyDawg]

Those old pier pole barns are still in use here. The tobacco is either air cured or fired with sawdust and slabs. Their is one right behind my house and I love smelling those wood fires in the late fall and early winter.

 

[Redbow]

Those old pier pole barns are still in use here. The tobacco is either air cured or fired with sawdust and slabs. Their is one right behind my house and I love smelling those wood fires in the late fall and early winter.

The smell of flu cured tobacco drifting on a cool summer's night breeze is hard to forget...Wish I could experience that just one more time before I pass on...

Someone on here spoke about tobacco drags. My Grandpa and his nephews didn't like them but many farmers around our area used them. Drags were hard on the Mules and my Grandpa would never allow that. We had tobacco trucks with wheels on them.. He took special care of his Mules, they helped make his living and the old man appreciate them..In no way am I implying that other folks were cruel to or didn't care about their farm animals..

 

[rvick]

I remember Daddy spending the night watching the tobacco "cook" and later guarding it all night with the shotgun in the pack house. Momma fixed him some iced tea in a jar one hot night and carried it thru the woods to him. He said it scared the Dickens out of him when he heard that ice tinkling in the jar and coming thru the woods toward him.

 

[Artfuldodger]

I never thought about having to guard it in the pack house. I remember unstringing tobacco. As I recall it didn't pay much.

I remember smelling tobacco riding by the warehouses in town. Another memory is smelling Honeysuckle and feeling the coolness while riding through a branch on a dirt road.

My Dad said the mule pulled tobacco sleds. Maybe that's the same as drags. That was before my time.

Sometimes diesel fuel reminds me of pulling the harvester. Sometimes it reminds me of the Submarine I was on.

Another memory I have is smelling cotton dust riding through the country side.

 

[rvick]

Dodger, if I remember correctly we got a nickel a stick for taking off the tobacco. Woe be unto the scoundrel that got caught stealing sticks off someone else's pile.
Never knew the sleds to be hard on a mule. In fact I thought they were a lot easier on them than pulling a plow all day. I've seen my Daddy and Uncle's whip another Uncle for abusing one of Grandaddy's mules.

 

[Stroker]

Those old pier pole barns are still in use here. The tobacco is either air cured or fired with sawdust and slabs. Their is one right behind my house and I love smelling those wood fires in the late fall and early winter.

KyDawg, I sure do miss smelling the smoke from those dark fired barns. Spent many a night checkin barns when the winds were real bad. Still got an old wheel barrow that has rolled tons of saw dust to set or freshen up fires in those barns.

 

[Nicodemus]

Dodger, if I remember correctly we got a nickel a stick for taking off the tobacco. Woe be unto the scoundrel that got caught stealing sticks off someone else's pile.
Never knew the sleds to be hard on a mule. In fact I thought they were a lot easier on them than pulling a plow all day. I've seen my Daddy and Uncle's whip another Uncle for abusing one of Grandaddy's mules.

The going rate for taking off around home was a cent and a half per stick. Where they came up with that is anybody`s guess. I wish I had asked while somebody was still alive who knew. I remember being paid $6 dollars a day for cropping. Later it went up to $8 dollars a day. When I was grown and took vacation from the power company to help out, all I got was breakfast, dinner, and supper. And a bed.

And I was still expected to work harder than anybody else.

 

[rvick]

Yeah, a nickel would have been too much cause croppers and hangers got $5 a day and stringers and handers got $3 a day. I got 50 cents a day for pulling sleds when I was a little fella'. Bet y'all remember the fine dinners we had every day. Made it hard to go back to work but we always had the energy to play.

 

[Artfuldodger]

I remember getting $8.00/day for cropping and hanging. I think we all made the same thing. That included a big country meal that had to be worth $4.00. Some farmers paid a little more but just took you to a store to eat junk.

I remember the rectangle tier poles being harder on bare feet than the round ones. I remember it raining in the barn from the morning dew. I remember cropping sand lugs.

Here is an old thread when some of these older guys still had their memory! lol

http://forum.gon.com/archive/index.php/t-409032.html

 

[Artfuldodger]

Interesting tobacco history from Jeff Davis county;

http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/ctb/south_georgia_tobacco_patch.html

Did most of you guys, Nic, and Jimbo plant your own beds?

 

[Nicodemus]

Interesting tobacco history from Jeff Davis county;

http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/ctb/south_georgia_tobacco_patch.html

Did most of you guys, Nic, and Jimbo plant your own beds?

Always, and in January. I remember seed came in little tin boxes or cans. I wish I had saved them now.

 

[BriarPatch99]

Yes we did make our own plant beds ... Like Nic said ... We'd start in late December getting the ground ready ...

Early January we'd gas the ground with methyl bromide gas to kill the weeds. This involved digging trenches down both sides of the bed to bury plastic cloth in and across both ends...
The gas came in cans much like Freon ... The cans were placed in boxes with a sharp nail that would puncture the can when pressed ...
Those boxes were placed an even distance apart down the bed ... Once all were in place the plastic was pulled over and buried making sure there were no places for the gas to escape...

Then the lightest person around ... usually me.... tip toe out onto the plastic and press the cans down on the nails releasing the gas into the box ... The gas vapors spread all under the plastic and kill pretty much anything it touched ... Including humans... But idea was to kill any weed seed and fungus (blue mold)that may be in the ground ...

Once that has stayed on for at least three days ... You removed the plastic ....Carefully!

Then the ground was raked with a iron tooth rake ... the seed then we're sowed making very sure to get an even spread .... The bed was Then rolled with a packer wheel ... Looked like a steam belt wheel off something ...

Then cypress logs were put down the edges and cheese cloth stretched over the beds ... this was to keep the frost off the tiny plants .... This was pulled off time to time for dusting and to pull any weeds the gas may have missed ....

Blue mold was the worse enemy along with cut worms and nematodes, ..

 

[Artfuldodger]

We'd haul water out of the creek in tar barrels (the night before)... dump with foot tubs into the floor of the barn ...to get the tobacco "in order" ... then get up at 4am and take out the tobacco ... just in time to put a full barn again that same day...

I never even thought about all that was involved in the curing. It's an art of science. A lot of ventilation, temperature, and humidity control. So the leaves were dried to a certain color/dryness and then water/humidity was added to put a small amount of moisture back in the leaf to make it pliable.
I guess the modern way would be to use a humidifier. Did ya'll use fans in the curing process or open/close doors dampers? Wet bulb/dry bulb thermometer? I guess it would be similar to a meat smoker in some ways but a lot more complicated. Some HVAC type implications of ventilation, temperature, and humidity.

So eventually this tobacco reaches the warehouse and the buyers inspect it. I would think they have did this long enough to know what to look for. The right color, touch, smell? This being what they price the sheet. Making sure the leaves don't have spots or rot?

I do remember how much lighter a stick of cured tobacco was compared to a green wet stick.

 

[Artfuldodger]

The going rate for taking off around home was a cent and a half per stick. Where they came up with that is anybody`s guess. I wish I had asked while somebody was still alive who knew. I remember being paid $6 dollars a day for cropping. Later it went up to $8 dollars a day. When I was grown and took vacation from the power company to help out, all I got was breakfast, dinner, and supper. And a bed.

And I was still expected to work harder than anybody else.

You had to go back to work to rest up from your "vacation."