WaltL1
Senior Member
We had a different method. This is how we "picked" it -Lot of nice pictures on this site from Berrien County;
https://berriencounty.smugmug.com/Commerce-and-Trade/Farm-Life-and-Agriculture/i-M6jkWCC
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Topping And Suckering Tobacco
- Thread starter Redbow
- Start date
BriarPatch99
Senior Member
Lot of nice pictures on this site from Berrien County;
https://berriencounty.smugmug.com/Commerce-and-Trade/Farm-Life-and-Agriculture/i-M6jkWCC
Spent many many days "driving sleds" .... Dad had just purchased a 1961 Ford 541 Offset ... Pulled sleds all around.... That tractor had been in seven different county's .... either plowing or pulling sleds....
sinclair1
Senior Member
I sacked groceries at Kroger as a first job. 
Worked hanging 'backer in the new-fangled propane bulk barns a couple summers during school. Rode on top of a combine with the lift up trailer/bins a few times with the task of keeping the leaves spread out to prevent clogging of the chute. About got my foot broken one time when I had it in the wrong place lifting the trailer. Just that little bit of experience was enough to cure me from missing that kind of work.
Redbow
Senior Member
I never worked on a tobacco harvester but friends of mine did. My Grandpa had tobacco trucks with wheels on them. He never liked the sleds for his mules to pull too much strain on them. I have seen people use sleds many times but I never liked the things either. Grandpa finally got a Cub Farmall tractor I guess sometime around 1954 or so and semi-retired his mules. He kept those animals until they died...As time went on I drove tractors in the bakker fields then finally graduated to cropping the stuff as it paid a bit more money. I quit with tobacco after the summer in 1962 when I became 16 years of age and got a job in downtown Selma NC in an air conditioned drug store. Only 50 cents per hour at the drug store compared to $1.25 per hour cropping bakker but I was sick of the bakker fields..
Same here with the burley we grew, but the sticks of 'backer were left standing in the field to cure a couple-three days before we hauled it to the barn and hung it. You would drive the 'backer stick in the ground, put the spud on it, and spear the stalks onto it until it was full, then go to the next one.
I grew up on a burley 'backer farm. It was backbreaking work from late winter to early winter. Topping and suckering were some of the worst of it, coming along in the hottest part of the summer. It would take you a long time to get that 'backer gum washed off your hands and arms, if you ever did. The stinging packsaddle caterpillars were a bonus. 
Redbow
Senior Member
I grew up on a burley 'backer farm. It was backbreaking work from late winter to early winter. Topping and suckering were some of the worst of it, coming along in the hottest part of the summer. It would take you a long time to get that 'backer gum washed off your hands and arms, if you ever did. The stinging packsaddle caterpillars were a bonus.
We had what the older folks called Box Lye soap home made of course to cut the bakker gum off our hands, it worked very well...I have watched my Grandma and my Aunt make it many times. Red Devil Lye..
Yep, my mom and grandma used to make it.
Redbow
Senior Member
Some ole country folk used to slip the farm Dog a small piece of the Lye soap to kill the intestinal worms in them. Now I don't know if it worked..
The old black folks around home would make their younguns swaller a pinch of snuff on a regular basis to kill worms.
Redbow
Senior Member
Yep, I have seen that as well. Lots of ole farm folks chewed tobacco and dipped snuff. If you got stung by a wasp or yellow jacket one of the men that had a chaw would grab you and put some tobacco spittal on the sting. It did help or it seemed to.
Redbow
Senior Member
Yes they would eat the blue clay.. Why they ate it is still a mystery to me today..
specialk
Senior Member
Been there done that....i faintly remember hand tying (womens work)......i came thru when they had electric stringers....big long portable conveyor belts would knock along a few seconds then that ''knife'' would slam down and cut the string....the men folk would prime(pulling leaves off the main stalk, you always pulled from the bottom so that meant staying bent over most of the day, the women would work at the barn on the stringer....when the stick of tobacco would come off the stringer they would lay it in a stack and when the men got thru pulling the field we would head to the barn and heist it up on the tier poles....
bulk curing slowly took over, they handle the leaves without caution as in the past....barn work was much different..there was a swivel table that you would fill up with leaves with all leaves pointed the same. a rack the was full of spikes that was pushed thru the leaves and a electric hoist that would pick up the rack and you put it in one of three levels....packed tight..... not as bad but still long days in the hot sun.....being a teen it was a good way to make money during the summer months....i swam and fished and worked tobacco...had a old honda elsinore 250 that i drove around to work and fishing.....despite the hard work it was still some of the best times of my life.....
bulk curing slowly took over, they handle the leaves without caution as in the past....barn work was much different..there was a swivel table that you would fill up with leaves with all leaves pointed the same. a rack the was full of spikes that was pushed thru the leaves and a electric hoist that would pick up the rack and you put it in one of three levels....packed tight..... not as bad but still long days in the hot sun.....being a teen it was a good way to make money during the summer months....i swam and fished and worked tobacco...had a old honda elsinore 250 that i drove around to work and fishing.....despite the hard work it was still some of the best times of my life.....
Stroker
Senior Member
We raised three types of tobacco, burley, one sucker, and dark fired. All were "spiked" on sticks and then hung in the barns to cure. The dark fired was smoked with hardwood slabs and saw dust, made the old barns look like they were on fire. The dark fired was raised in only five counties, three in TN and two in KY. After curing all three types would be moved to a stripping rooms where it was graded and tied into hands. Stripping rooms were known for some wild card games and corn liquor drinking. Me and KYdawg lived less than 30 miles apart and knew many of the same people and shared stories about them and the stripping room wild card games and liquor drinking.
Redbow
Senior Member
I started out handing tobacco at our old tobacco barn. My cousins the men that owned the farm I was raised on had two more tobacco barns on the side of the farm they lived on. The women would string the tobacco on what we called looping horses. Many bags of tobacco twine was used during the barning season. I hated being around the barn shelter and listening to the women talking all the time.
We had racks we hung the tobacco in when it came off the looping horse.. Wet tobacco was the very worst, a rainy day barning tobacco was terrible. Then were all the tobacco for that day was gotten out of the field came hanging time. The croppers hit the tier poles ours were round and slippery many men hung tobacco in the barn bare footed... The barn help toated as we called it the sticks of tobacco from the racks to the tobacco barn, usually two men on the ground inside the tobacco barn poked the sticks full of tobacco up to the hangers. There were usually 4 men doing the hanging up in the tobacco barn. Everybody just wanted to get the tobacco out of the racks and into the tobacco barn. Knowing that days work with the tobacco was about finished seemed to give everyone an energy boost to hurry up and get through.
Later that evening Grandpa would fire the old wood furnace and the curing process started. Grandpa had a tobacco truck with a pallet of blankets on it and a sheet so he could maybe catch a short nap in between him firing the furnace for several nights and days to follow... On the end of the barn shelter he had what we called cotton sheets just burlap fertilizer bags sown together nailed up to help keep the rain off him during the summer storms... That old man spent many a night firing that old wood furnace for many years...
We had racks we hung the tobacco in when it came off the looping horse.. Wet tobacco was the very worst, a rainy day barning tobacco was terrible. Then were all the tobacco for that day was gotten out of the field came hanging time. The croppers hit the tier poles ours were round and slippery many men hung tobacco in the barn bare footed... The barn help toated as we called it the sticks of tobacco from the racks to the tobacco barn, usually two men on the ground inside the tobacco barn poked the sticks full of tobacco up to the hangers. There were usually 4 men doing the hanging up in the tobacco barn. Everybody just wanted to get the tobacco out of the racks and into the tobacco barn. Knowing that days work with the tobacco was about finished seemed to give everyone an energy boost to hurry up and get through.
Later that evening Grandpa would fire the old wood furnace and the curing process started. Grandpa had a tobacco truck with a pallet of blankets on it and a sheet so he could maybe catch a short nap in between him firing the furnace for several nights and days to follow... On the end of the barn shelter he had what we called cotton sheets just burlap fertilizer bags sown together nailed up to help keep the rain off him during the summer storms... That old man spent many a night firing that old wood furnace for many years...
WaltL1
Senior Member
Very interesting!
I never got to see any of the other processes other than being out in the fields with the migrant workers chopping and spearing.
WaltL1
Senior Member
As much as 'backer was hard work, I hated picking corn more than any other job.I grew up on a burley 'backer farm. It was backbreaking work from late winter to early winter. Topping and suckering were some of the worst of it, coming along in the hottest part of the summer. It would take you a long time to get that 'backer gum washed off your hands and arms, if you ever did. The stinging packsaddle caterpillars were a bonus.
52 freakin ears per burlap sack to go to market from sunup to sundown. That corn use to make me itch so bad I just wanted to rip my skin off.
