I am having a little trouble getting fired up about this. I suspect that is because I never got that enthralled with tobacco. Except for the money when it came.
At any rate the tobacco had been doing its curing thing in the barn-- the one we called the Backer Barn. The cool autumn weather and the damp rainy days ushered in the final tobacco tasks. It was a family project. It needed little equipment- only the sorting table. A long rectangular table partitioned off into four bins.
Daddy and Mommy stripped the leaves from the stalks and placed them in the bins according to size and color. RAGS were the leaves at the bottom of the stalk and the least valuable. Then came LIGHT RED and DARK RED-- differing only by color. These two were the choice tobacco. Lastly came TIPS the smaller leaves from the top of the plant.
We kids neatly arranged a handful of leaves and securely bound the top with a good leaf. The repetitive handling of the tobacco covered our with brown waxy sticky muck. Gather, arrange, tie and toss into the proper pile.
The completed hands of tobacco were packed on the square baskets, with the tied ends to the outside. It was ready for market.
All the farmers took their packed baskets to the tobaccp auction house where it was sold at auction. And then came the only nice part about tobacco farming. We had money-- the big cash crop of the whole farm.
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