Posted on 08/20/2009 5:29:15 AM PDT by Peter Horry
RICHMOND, Va. -- Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars' vegetable garden - the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.
Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he's among a growing number of smokers who have turned to their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew. Byars normally pays $5 for a five-pack of cigars and $3 for a tin of snuff; the seed cost him $9.
"I want to get to where I don't have to go to the store and buy tobacco, but I'll just be able to supply my own from one year to the next," Byars said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestate.com ...
Yikes!
ATF should be a convenience store, not a federal agency! :)
Tobacco growers better be careful.
The BATFE might just claim that you’re “abusing” your kids and raid your “compound” just in time for the annual budget hearings.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Thanks for the ping. I haven’t considered and probably won’t until my current source is outlawed......
That’s all I got to say bout dat!
Even a small greenhouse would be sufficient to grow all that even a heavy smoker needs.
If you’ve ever planted Nicotania ornamentals in your yard, you’ve grown tobacco, essentially. It’ll grow in Canada. Many family members of mine used to make a nice little side business, out of hopping a train, or later flying, up to Canada to assist with planting and harvesting.
The author is mangling a few things. First, there is a big difference between Bright Leaf and Burley tobacco. Bright Leaf is flue cured, with heat, in a barn. Burley is cut and air dried. Bright Leaf is the primary tobacco used in cigarettes, for the most part, but there are many, many blends. Burley is primarily used for cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco.
The goal in curing, whether by flue curing with heat or air drying, is to reduce the moisture content to a level of preservability, generally 20% or so.
I suppose a lot of these folks quoted have an old, log tobacco barn falling into disuse on their property, and they’ve put them back to use. A big part of rural southern culture once revolved around sitting at the barns all night, tending to the fires, just as a big part of rural, southern culture revolved around going to market ... to “town.” School schedules were structured around it.
So-called bulk barns, looking more like a semi trailer, with electric heat and dehumidification, made the process much easier and faster, but the culture was lost, as was much of the pride and craft. And, the tobacco looks like trash, all shredded and shot through with holes. No pretty, golden leaves to show off proudly. My grandfather would have been horrified and disgusted, if he had lived to see it.
Many of my ancestral lines here in the US, including my main paternal line, came here to the colonies of Maryland and Virginia to plant tobacco, in the early to mid 1600’s. They were planters in NC before the Revolution, grew it straight through the Civil War, though in the majority of cases the women had to tend it in large part and the Yankees destroyed a crop or two. Not too many of them held slaves for such things. They only stopped with the passing of my grandfather’s generation, in the early seventies. Then, they first resorted to tenat farming, and after that, leasing out the alotment.
It was an honorable but hard way to make a living, and many did quite well with it. The towns of Richmond, Winston-Salem, Danville and Durham grew to early prominence and were cities of wealth and influence, because of it. Cultural influences abound due to tobacco. Duke University, countless foundations.
The whole thing makes me sick. Stupid health nazis. Now, they’re going after food. When will people wake up?
I’ve been buying the same tobacco, but sold as pipe tobacco from EA Carey for $29.99 a pound. The 10.5 oz cans that are for “cigarettes” runs about $50. The pipe tobacco is a thicker shag, but rolls and smokes just as good as the more finely cut cigarette version.
JIM STAFFORD lyrics - Wildwood Weed
Hey I’ve seen that before.
Neither did mine, but I’m still using my ecigarette. Haven’t had a smoke since May 23rd.
Flue Cured tobacco is what I remember, though my first cousin married a submarine sailor from Tennessee whose father grew Burley and I visited his farm a few times.
Curing tobacco with wood is a little before my time. I do remember the log barns but they had been converted from wood to kerosene burners. Log barns, with wooden shingles, were replaced with frame and siding barns with metal roofs and the kerosene burners were replaced by fuel oil burners which were thermostatically controlled.
The barns that were used are in a serious state of disrepair and something smaller than the 16’ or 20’ would suffice for personal use.... perhaps 8’ or 10’.
I`ve raised Burley tobacco for 40 years,got 5 acres
ready to cut in about 2 weeks.One of the best crops
this year in several years.
Burley is for cigarettes...Dark fired is chewing tobacco.
Never grew any Dark fired tho. It`s grown not far from
me.People every year call the fire dept thinking the barns
on fire when it`s being smoked
Bright Leaf is all anyone in my family grew. It was always startling to me, to see entire plants cut and hung to dry in ventilated barns, or even stood on end in the fields like small, oldfashioned haystacks or something, whenever we went through a place, where Burley was more the rule. Closest would be the NC mountain counties.
So, thanks for the further clarification. Despite so many generations of knowledge in my family, Burley is a little outside of it.
Ever been to Danville, VA? Such a grand old market town, fine edifices and civic structures, “Millionaire’s Row” of amazing homes, the whole place now gone down to so little. Beautiful, old historic granite bridge over the Dan River, closed rather than repaired, traffic signals removed due to no traffic, and I guess the maintenance and electricity cost.
If there’s ever a good reason to be there again, Danville would be one fine place to revitalize. They’re trying, but job loss gets in the way, again and again.
Is that the Worsham St, Wilson St. bridge? I remember seeing it when we were going through Danville a couple of months ago?
Yep, cross Craghead on Wilson on the downtown side in the old brick warehouse district to cross it, or you once did. Tall chain link fencing and a gate across the road now, with weeds and even trees starting to pop up through the pavement, and out on the bridge itself. That’ll bring it down in short order, tree roots. It’s pitiful.
ping
I wasn’t that familiar with dark fired tobacco but did find a little information here http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=T101 . Used to drive through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, in the fall, and remember seeing the “smoking” barns. Thought they were being used to “smoke” meat but some of them could have been for tobacco.
Haven`t been to Danville,but have been al over Va,beautiful
towns all over the state.Lots of history,I love to visit
the Civil War sites that are all over the state
At one time we had 5 tobacco floors in our town in northern
mid-Tn.None now,all has to signed with a buyer with a promise to deliver the lbs on the contract
It`s a real gamble growing tobacco,as a matter of fact we
had a storm come through this afternoon.Blew a lot of
plants around.Gonna have to walk through trying to straighten `em tomorow.They`d be crooked by cutting time
otherwise and hard to spike and hang
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