What farm task do kids today know nothing about.

[buckeyefarmer]

Buckeye,

Wonder if you still have the tobiano paint in your avatar? Mare or Gelding?. Will post a photo of my mare as an edit. She likes to roll in the mud and still has some winter coat. When she does roll it is always all the way over.

Wasn't my horse. Friends ranch in Colorado where we would ride. I love riding, but don't really want to own a horse.

 

[RSKY]

How did the calf and cow turn out after using the tractor.
I had to use tractor once ruined cow and calf

They were both okay. The cow had run around the field for a day with the calf's nose and front legs sticking out. I had to chase her to the stables on a motorcycle. BUT the next year, or two it's been a long time ago, we found the cow dead in the field. Of course I had to be the one to drag her to 'the ditch' were dead animals were placed. Then I covered her with a thin layer of dirt. About a year later I went into that area and saw the skeleton and the calf inside that cow was huge. So big that she couldn't have had it. We would have had to use a chainsaw to get it out. A couple other cows were having trouble with their calves and Dad blamed it on the bull and got rid of him.

RSKY

 

[RSKY]

Even in this area there are not many teenagers who have worked in tobacco. The farmer that rents my mother's old tobacco barn has a crew of Mexicans to do the work on the 160 acres he grows. When I was in my teens that is how we made spending money. Hauling hay and cutting tobacco.

THAT my friends is hard work.

I was always one of the biggest (maybe the dumbest) kids so I always ended up on the bottom passing it up into the barn or on the bottom tier. So I had to handle every single stick. We never had anybody fall out of the top and get hurt, well not hurt bad. But we had one guy break sticks on five or six tiers on the way down. He didn't do much work the rest of the day but got paid anyway.

Those who have done it know what I'm talking about. Those that haven't done it can't understand when you try to explain it.

RSKY

 

[smstonypoint]

Even in this area there are not many teenagers who have worked in tobacco. The farmer that rents my mother's old tobacco barn has a crew of Mexicans to do the work on the 160 acres he grows. When I was in my teens that is how we made spending money. Hauling hay and cutting tobacco.

THAT my friends is hard work.

I was always one of the biggest (maybe the dumbest) kids so I always ended up on the bottom passing it up into the barn or on the bottom tier. So I had to handle every single stick. We never had anybody fall out of the top and get hurt, well not hurt bad. But we had one guy break sticks on five or six tiers on the way down. He didn't do much work the rest of the day but got paid anyway.

Those who have done it know what I'm talking about. Those that haven't done it can't understand when you try to explain

RSKY

Well, I haven't done it, but I think I understand. After the tobacco buyout, a local farmer (in NC) expanded his flue-cured operation to areas near my farm. Word at the barbershop is that he employed 60 Hispanic workers via the H2-A program to tend his 1,000-acre crop last year. I can understand why he couldn't find any locals to do the work.

My maternal grandfather had a very small tobacco enterprise. My Mom made my Dad promise that he would never grow tobacco before she agreed to marry him. He kept his word.

Steve

 

[Streetcar]

Even in this area there are not many teenagers who have worked in tobacco. The farmer that rents my mother's old tobacco barn has a crew of Mexicans to do the work on the 160 acres he grows. When I was in my teens that is how we made spending money. Hauling hay and cutting tobacco.

THAT my friends is hard work.

I was always one of the biggest (maybe the dumbest) kids so I always ended up on the bottom passing it up into the barn or on the bottom tier. So I had to handle every single stick. We never had anybody fall out of the top and get hurt, well not hurt bad. But we had one guy break sticks on five or six tiers on the way down. He didn't do much work the rest of the day but got paid anyway.

Those who have done it know what I'm talking about. Those that haven't done it can't understand when you try to explain it.

RSKY

Risky
The key was working with people afraid of heights. I always was stuck on the top tier

 

[Gunny]

The good ole top tier, as kids, that's where we started our tobacco hanging careers. If you've got to be housing tobacco, the top sounds better, less sticks to handle, but the heat up in the top of those barns was murder.

 

[RSKY]

Well, I haven't done it, but I think I understand. After the tobacco buyout, a local farmer (in NC) expanded his flue-cured operation to areas near my farm. Word at the barbershop is that he employed 60 Hispanic workers via the H2-A program to tend his 1,000-acre crop last year. I can understand why he couldn't find any locals to do the work.

My maternal grandfather had a very small tobacco enterprise. My Mom made my Dad promise that he would never grow tobacco before she agreed to marry him. He kept his word.

Steve

HOLY SMOKES, 1,000 acres of TOBACCO!!!! He would need more than sixty to cut, haul, and put that much in the barns. The guy that has 160 acres has thirty working for him. He built twelve huge barns on his place and rents all the others he can. 1,000 acres would require 200 huge barns. And that would be five acres per barn which is a lot to have burn up. If I remember correctly most barns around here hold between one or two acres. Dang, I cannot imagine tending the fires for all that! Plus all the slabs and sawdust required.

It must be air cured and not dark fired.

While we are talking about tobacco I know three more things few today would know about. First is firing tobacco, that is tending the smoldering fires under a crop in a barn to cure it. If you don't get everything just right the flames ignite the tobacco and you have lost fourteen months work and all your income for the year. That is one job I have never done. I helped my dad until about ten years old when he quit growing it.

Second is splitting tobacco. I have only done that once and made a mess out of it. Everybody changed from splitting to spiking about the time I started working in it.

Third is stripping tobacco. That is when you take the cured tobacco down out of the barn and put it, still on the sticks, in a building (or stripping shed) and spray it with water to get it "in order". Then everybody sits around in a circle and pulls the leaves off the stalk and uses a good bottom leaf to tie the tobacco into "hands".

Just typing this out has brought back a lot of memories that I would rather forget. My maternal grandmother stripped tobacco until she was in her late eighties or early nineties. She was good at it and people would go by and pick her up and take her home to get her to work. There were about a half dozen old ladies that were slow but good at the job and the people that hired them would have to make them stop to take a break or eat lunch.

I hate tobacco with a passion. Quit smoking thirty years ago, can't stand the smell now. And I absolutely hate chewing tobacco. The only way I would go into a tobacco field would be if somebody in my family were starving. Or I was on a tractor with a bushhog.

Another memory, anybody ever put burley in a barn. THAT is a man killer.

RSKY

 

[RSKY]

The good ole top tier, as kids, that's where we started our tobacco hanging careers. If you've got to be housing tobacco, the top sounds better, less sticks to handle, but the heat up in the top of those barns was murder.

You got that right. Heat, bats, and wasps in the top. Heavy lifting and eating dust and trash on the bottom.

For some reason I can't remember ever taking tobacco down out of the barn for stripping. Guess once I got big enough to do that I was in school. You wouldn't need as many people to do that until you got to the top anyway.

RSKY

 

[Streetcar]

Rsky
Stripping tobacco could be done at slower pace. Most farmers did not like to pay for stripping.
I was glad when tobaccibwent from hands to be tied to the bales