A Real Southern Crop

For those of us of Northern extraction, this is an unusual sight.  Just as cotton fields are foreign to us, so to are tobacco harvests.  As a former smoker, I never really considered where the tobacco came from, who was involved or how it was processed.

I was told by one farmer, who raises tobacco, that the cost of planting and maintaining a tobacco crop is astronomical and a huge gamble on profit.  Because of this, most farmers do not plant it as a primary crop but as a supplementary source of income.  These photos represent this Septembers harvest.  Once cut the tobacco leaves are hung to dry then sold at various tobacco markets for further processing.  Next summer I'll visit this subject again with photos of the earlier stages of planting and growth thru harvest.  Cathy and I were driving around Byrdstown when we came across these tobacco barns and drying racks.  It wasn't long ago, early August I believe, when we were driving through Kentucky and was watching a farmer harvest cotton with a huge cotton picker (not sure what they call them today).  This thing was cutting at least 20-30 rows of cotton at one time.  I'm gonna see if I can find another farmer that works cotton and try to get some pics of that as well. 

Morning mist

Headed out this morning to do some work on the other side of the county, about 25 miles away and happened to look back as I was headed up the mountain.  Thought it was a nice soft picture.

 

Didn't stop to think that I'd be driving thru that stuff on my way east but boy did I.  It gets so thick at times that you can't see the edge of the road and, in these mountains where we don't have many guard rails, you have to really be careful.  It could be a long way down, as you can see from this next picture. 

 



 

 

Yup - that ain't no illyusion - that thar be a Tennessee hill.  Actually this is state rte 127 going north from Jamestown toward Kentucky.  If you look kinda close you'll notice the road curves to the left but then it goes into an "S" curve and you're still going down hill at the same angle.  Some of the log and rock haulers have an exciting time going down this thing.  Two days ago they had this roadway blocked and were rerouting traffic.  I assume someone overshot one of those curves and wound up going over the mountain.  We'll be reading about it in the newspaper if they did.  Hope no one was hurt.    Later