Summer's almost gone, but we made it count!

Chris Marklin has kept the sprayer moving all summer.  We sprayed all the soybean ground at planting after we cut the wheat.  We made a post emergence application of roundup for weed control in late July.  In August another pass was made to apply fungicide and insecticide on the soybeans.  The beans look great and should be a good crop if we can miss an early frost.

Our H2A crew leader Jorge.  He has been with us since 1999 and is valuable member of our team.  Jorge is pictured as the men finish up topping the last field of tobacco for the year on July30th.

All the tobacco wagons have to be prepared for cutting season.  We have a lot of wagons and even more tires to repair!  Sherman Marklin is pictured changing a flat.

A field of tobacco after topping.

The first day of tobacco cutting  August 1, 2013.

David Brown, Sherman Marklin, and Kevin Dukes making repairs to a tobacco wagon.

All the rainfall has led to our tobacco getting extremely big and heavy.  It takes a lot of work repairing and maintaining the scaffle wagons we hang the tobacco on in the field to get it to the barns.

Lighting fires in the tobacco barns is a hot job.  We generally fire each barn 3 times about a week long each time.  The heat dries the tobacco down and the smoke sticks to the leaves and makes the dark finish on the leaf.  The finish gives the leaf the desirable qualities of color and flavor for snuff tobacco.

After the tobacco is cut and spiked on the sticks it is loaded on scaffle wagons for transport to the barns.  There are about 850 sticks of tobacco per acre and each wagon will hold 125-150 sticks of tobacco.

Jose Ramirez pictured with a grande las oja de tobacco.

Workers stand on the tiers and hand the tobacco up in the barn.

Slabs in a barn waiting to be fired.

Workers must hand each stick up into the barn to be hung on the tiers for curing.

Sawdust is added on top of the slabs to prepare the barn for firing.

Each plant at this point has been handled at planting, topping, cutting, spiking, and 6 plants are put on each stick.  Each stick will be handled at the field a couple of times and up to 4 or 5 times each going in the barn. 


 

Hardwood slabs (oak & hickory) are covered with sawdust to fire cure tobacco.

Smokey Barns

We are down to the last patch of tobacco and should have it all in the barn by the end of this week!  It's been a long exhausting six weeks for everyone.  Our 24 H2A workers have put in long hot days to get it done and we are grateful for their work ethic and dedication.  No rest for the weary though they will start striping tobacco next week!