Old job of cutting tobacco

Got to thinking today about all the old tobacco jobs that used to be around in Maryland
that left in the 90s. During the late summer if it wasnt raining work would start about 8:30. Hopefully 10 workers would show up, but if there was only 2 of us it didnt stop anything - you just adapted. Using tobacco knives, which look like small hatchets, we would cut down about 1000 plants. Each cutter would take two rows, cut the plants and lay them in an orderly pile. The stick dropper (one of my first jobs @ 5) needed to drop a stick for every 5 plants. Soon as the plants had killed or fallen it would be limp enough to spear onto the sticks. Any excess sticks would be stuck in the ground for retrieval later. 5 plants usually went on a stick and the filled sticks were placed in a pile with the cut end facing east. Someone would get the AC D15 and the wooden trailer and the loader would have sticks handed to him and he would pile as many as his skill would let him. The D15 tractor would head for the barn and the loader would switch to the old John Deere we had. By this time more plants had been cut.
At the barn it took up to five workers. The most important job was the hangers. You had to place the stick on the poles and make sure none of the plants were touching each other or the barn - this could cause rotting. One worker would be on the wooden trailer handing the stick up to the worker at the first level then he would pass it on until it got to the hanger. Broken sticks and split plants were handed to the driver if he was still there or tossed aside. The driver would take another tractor/wooden trailer out to the field to the loader.
Everyting cut had to be in the barn by noon. At 1 PM it all started again (piles facing sw)with everything loaded by 4PM.
Everyone then would have a 10 minute watermelon and Shasta soda break.
The last load would go on the stick trailer pulled by a Farmall cub. One person would be replacing broken sticks and the split plants and hanging them at the first level. Another would be picking good leaves out of the trash pile where each trailer was cleaned off. Others could be out in the field looking for ground leaves - they break off when the plants were cut. Sometimes a new section would have come in bloom and those plants would need the top third broken out called topping. When the break turned brown that new section would be due for cutting. Finally it would be time to go home.

That sounds like a lot of work!why were all the plants "cutside east"in the morning,and then "cutside southwest" in the afternoon?

Dad grew up on his grandpa's a tobacco farm in Cary, NC. I never remember hearing him talk about the stalks facing any particular direction, and in his case the wagons were hauled either with a JD A or a mule. I know he spent alot of time in the fields but to hear him talk most of his time was spent in the top of the tobacco house doing the hanging. Ultimatly it all sounds like ALOT of work........Sad to see the industry die off and put so many people out of work as a result.......

So the sun would help the tobacco "fall" or wilt. You can't spear a green plant, it splits the stem, too much. A wilted plant will spear without splitting.

That's the way they still do it here.

Well...we did pretty much the same thing in southern Indiana...but we cut and speared it on to the stick at the same time. We did not let it wilt.
Still got the scar on my arm where a stick bowed and sent a spear into my arm when I was a kid.
We called them tobacco tiers in the barn...best job was at the top where the dirt could not fall down on ya.

Ahh the good old days, this topics brings back fond memories. I still feel the blisters on both hands until you got the wrist snap right doing the topping. We would cut the 12 acres, then spear then hang. Made almost as much on 12 acres as we did on the rest of the farm.

What type of tobacco were you cutting? My experience is solely with MD type 32. Different types of tobacco have radically different methods of culture.

What do you mean "old job" cause that"s the way it"s still done in my area of W. Ky. Tobacco (dark fired & dark air cured) is still king in my county and neighboring county. There are 22 barns that I can think of that will be firing in September within 2 miles of my farm. I can see tobacco out my front window.

There is less than 10 acres of tobacco grown in the county now. We used to have 45 acres, and all neighboring farms had a few acres. Many of the older barns are coming down, as well as the warehouses were the crops were sold.

Good to hear it is still going well your way.

You needed the plants wilted but not sunburnt. The sun would hit it correctly then.