Tobacco setting is complete and Summer Harvest 2015 is here!

Grain harvest has begun in Middle TN!  We raise barley and wheat in our area.  The barley was harvested last week.  Barley is used in feed rations for livestock.  We like to raise a few acres of barley to set the combine and make sure all of our harvest equipment is ready to go.  Barley usually matures about a week before the earliest wheat varieties.  We expect to begin wheat harvest in a just a few days now.  

Jake Mitchell planting double crop, GMO herbicide tolerant, (RoundUp Ready) soybeans into the straw behind the combine. The straw will help hold moisture in the ground during the summer.  

Chris and Sherman Marklin filling the sprayer with herbicides to kill the weeds in the field so they don't compete with the seedling soybeans for water and nutrients.  

Sherman Marklin spraying grass herbicide on tobacco in Robertson Co. TN.  

The tobacco setting crew "riding the setter" transplanting tobacco plants.  Each plant must be placed into the setter.  This is just the first time of many for these plants to be handled by worker hands.  Tobacco is a very labor intensive crop.  

The setter and tiller tractors running in the field on RTK guidance.  The RTK guidance gives us sub-inch accuracy that can be repeated from one pass to another with different machines.  This makes a long day of driving the tractor much easier and more efficient.   

The farm where these pictures were made is owned by our cousin and has been in the family since 1806.  Dark Tobacco has been grown on the farm most every year since then.  We still hang tobacco in barns that have been on the family farm for over 100 years like the one in the background below.  I guess it's a family tradition for a dying breed.  My cousin said the other day "Grand Pappy would be proud to know we are still here and raising tobacco."