A few random pictures

Today me and the family took a long needed vacation and went to the State Fair. A good time was had by all until our youngest son started feeling poorly. I snapped a few pictures along the way to share.

First up is the 1 row Farmall collection that the local Farmall Chapter 37 always puts together usually honoring the tobacco heritage. There surely wasn't as many antique tractors on display usual.


Picture posting isn't cooperating, so bear with me as I may have to make multiple posts. Next up is the sawmill for Richard G and other sawmill enthusiasts. They were powering it this year with a Frick steam engine fed off of the scraps. I have seen it ran from a Farmall M but not today.

Next up is the shingle mill powered by a Farmall H I believe.

Next is the log tobacco curing barn. We were late in the season getting to the fair and they had already hung a barn and were a good ways along with the curing. As long as my own tobacco crop seemed this year, I think I'll pass on helping them take this barn out to get it baled, and prepped for sale delivery.

Jim in NC, you and Mrs Joanne evidently made quick work of getting that barn of baccer strung and hung. On top of that,any leftover messes were already cleaned up, as there wasn't a wasted leaf to be had. Lol. I hope one day we could meet there at the mechanical stringer and you could show me how it works. My tenure started in the bulk/rack barn days.

Next up is the reason for going besides escaping the farm as a family for a little mental therapy relief after finishing up getting most of the crops harvested. Our oldest son Grayson and his fellow FFA peers were in charge of managing the Field Of Dreams ag display booth. His job was to answer any questions about the animals at that particular exhibit. It's amazing to me how they can keep all of the crops in that display looking so good this late in the season. Larry on the Corner must be making frequent trips to help tend to and nourish them.

Being that we bleed red on this farm, we just had to stop and drool a bit at the IH tractor display tent. This 464 and 574 brought back memories from my youth. We used to have a 464 that we closed up to 50 inch wheel tread yearly to pull the baccer harvester with. Talk about a long, sleepy time, all summer, poking along in 1st gear low range all day, at 550 engine rpms. The only excitement was if someone disagreed with what happened on the soap opera at dinner time. Lol. We got er done tho. Times sure seem to be simpler back then.

Well, I hope I didn't get too boring with this long post. I had intended to get a picture of a Cub Loboy that's painted pink for Grandpa Love, but little man's endurance level had fallen in the dumps by then and needed to come home. I could spend most of the day there just looking at the old tractors.

Thanks for the photos of the sawmill.

That is quite the plank sitting in the foreground of the sawmill picture!

I would make a road trip to just about anywhere to find a shingle mill, do not know that I have ever seen one just like that one but sure wish I could locate one.

Looks like it was a great day!

They have always had these sawn and in place for use as benches for spectators to sit and watch the action. Some fresh ones were being made when we got there early this morning, but we were too late for this demonstration time.

Thanks for posting! A pink Cub? Hmmmmmmm. Lol

Glad yall had a day to relax a bit. All the Red fits in well as it is displayed in the shadows of Carter Finley Stadium. Most of our tobacco growing and curing pics are on film or a camera card. I may be able to find a few to post and will try it in the next night or two. There are 3 Tiemasters here. One is easy to get at, and I guess we can have a stringing seminar during a future visit. I do have a VHS tape of a school project my daughter did when in the eighth grade that would entertain you. I also volunteered at the fair curing barn several years ago and found a few pics of that. Below is a pic of my Grandaddy, mom's dad, taken likely in the early 1960s. The rooftop is the house where I grew up. The second pic is of my daughter handing up a stick of tobacco around 2008-9 while helping a neighbor fill the wood fired barn here.







Miss Joanne and the neighbor's wife running the stringer.

Tobacco farms have always intrigued me Jim. Here's a question for you .... what route or travels does a tobacco leaf follow once it leaves your farm as far as the business end of it (ie. selling and buying, storage, shipping, etc). Eventually it would end up in cigarettes I assume, or maybe pipe tobacco right?

Here in Kentucky, there is actually a cigarette manufacturer in Cynthiana. I think Lexington has some, and there used to be some in Maysville. Here in Ky, burley tobacco used to be sold in warehouses at auction, but that has faded away to receiving stations where they grade and buy it and load it out. I think the cigarette makers cure it some more and ultimately make cigarettes. Kentucky used to the largest grower of burley, but I don't know for sure anymore since I'm no longer growing it. A lot of guys locally have switched to cigar wrapper tobacco, because it pays better and the demand for burley has fallen.
There are several types of tobacco, burley, flue cured, dark fired, and cigar wrapper. Burley is harvested stalk and leaves, which are stripped after curing, and the other types are stripped of the leaves before they go to the curing barn. There may be others and I don't know all their uses, but a lot of it has to do with the flavor of the smoke. Mark.

Good stuff Mark .... I do know that some Central American cigars (from Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, etc), Mexico, and some USA-made cigars use what is called Connecticut wrapper, I always assumed that's where it came from. Or at least maybe originated from there and is now grown in other places. Connecticut-wrapped cigars are very light or pale in colour.

I remember hearing that Connecticut cigar tobacco was grown under nets. Mark.

Hello Crazy Horse,

The Connecticut river valley was once home to some of the finest cigar wrappers in the world. They are a shade tobacco which means they are grown under netting. The past years I have seen more broadleaf grown in the fields as opposed to shade. I guess the market changed in the region. When I was a kid lots of shade was grown in the area.

Hope this helps

Vito

Crazy Horse I may start a new topic dealing with flue cured tobacco, grown in the southeast, from Florida to Virginia . I found a few pics that I can post that may help explain the crop is produced, cured, sold, and processed.

Crazy Horse the tobacco that CR produces and I grew is used mostly in cigarettes. It is flue cured tobacco, and it is called that because a heat source is in the curing barns which dry the tobacco leaves. Flue cured tobacco is harvested by priming, pulling, or cropping(these terms all mean the same thing which is picking the leaves from the stalk) from close to the ground, then upwards over 6 to 8 weeks as needed when the leaves mature and ripen. The harvesting can be done by hand or machines. Once cured the leaves are removed from the barn and prepared for marketing.

Tobacco used to be a very labor-intensive crop, and there are times now the old ways have to be used on occasion. I know a grower in my county that cannot use his mechanical harvester because of the damage tropical storm Ian did to his crop. He was planning to finish harvesting his tobacco yesterday. For the last few weeks he has had to harvest by hand or manually, which put him behind. Overall automation and more modern equipment has reduced the amount of manual labor required.

When I grew tobacco, to sell it I took it to a privately-owned warehouse. The leaves were packaged bundles or sheets of tobacco, up to 275 pounds. The sheets were weighed and lined up on the floor. Each sheet was graded based upon its quality and stalk position, how far above the ground the leaves were, and the sheets were sold by auction. Many sets of buyers from various tobacco companies would travel the many warehouses across the flue cured tobacco belt to buy what they needed. Tobacco companies would pick up their purchased tobacco, and move it to their manufacturing plants or warehouse storage facilities.

Today a tobacco farmer contracts with a specific tobacco company to buy his crop. It is packaged in bales weighing up to 700 pounds. The tobacco is re-dried, de-stemmed, and ground to what you would see in a cigarette. Before processing the tobacco companies age it, often with added flavorings sometimes for many years, depending upon what brand their product was. It can also be blended with other tobacco types to produce a certain taste or flavor to for a smoker. There are many videos on the net showing the processes of growing and selling tobacco.

There is a facebook group, Raised on a Tobacco Farm, with lots of interesting pics and info about tobacco farming. This is an attempt at a brief, simple description of only a part what one has to endure when producing tobacco.

There are other tobacco types produced in the US. Burley, dark fired, cigar wrapper, and Maryland tobacco are the ones that come to mind. Different varieties along with climate and growing practices have determined the growing regions for the different types. I hope this helps a little. Tobacco farming has its own set of practices which are very unique.

Great info Jim, thanks so much. Funny how so much is often taken for granted and nothing is known about how something is produced. MIKE

I was hoping you would see this. Sometimes as topics are pushed back by newer subjects they get lost. Thanks letting me know on you found it. I have many pics of our tobacco growing adventures. Most are on film though. I have a few accessible by my phone, and they are scattered through albums. In the darkness and cold of winter maybe I can post some of them. Feel free to remind me.

I'll watch for them. While cigarette smoking had dropped off drastically in North America for sure, I have friends that have traveled to Europe and Asia plus other places where they say you can't go anywhere without seeing somebody smoking. Funny thing now is that when I see someone smoking, I almost do a double take. I'm sure there are still lots that do though, but they're not seen. A person might see a cigar smoker one or twice a year, it might be ten years now that I haven't seen a pipe smoker. I'm not a smoking snob by any means, I think most from my generation smoked at least at one time (I'm 76 now).