Hanging Tobacco

I was riding around on a 4-wheeler early in the morning and remembered there was a dead tree down in the path back in the 'holler'. So I hopped on the tractor and drove back there and used the scoop to push the tree out of the path. I scooped out a few buckets of the gravel that was filling in the branch at that spot and dumped the gravel in a low spot along the trail. I then used the scoop to level the gravel. I put the tractor back in the hay shed and continued my ride on the 4-wheeler. Around 11 AM, I was back outside on the 4-wheeler and rode up the road to where Phil and his crew were picking up the sticks of tobacco they had cut the day before. Two guys were picking up the sticks with 5 or 6 stalks of tobacco on each stick. The sticks of tobacco weigh about 30 to 50 lbs per stick, depending on the size of the plants. They hand those sticks to Phil on the wagon and he lays them against the other sticks and stacks them from the rear to the front of the wagon. Cody, Phil's grandson, was driving the tractor slowly through the field until the wagon was full.
 
Once they had two full wagons of tobacco they pulled the wagons into the barn and began the hanging of the tobacco. Two guys climbed up the wood racks inside the barn, another guy stayed on the wagon and began handing the sticks to a guy on the ground who walked over and handed the sticks up to the lower guy who handed the stick to the top guy in the barn who hung the tobacco sticks across the wood racks. They first filled the barn top and simply moved back and forth across the wood racks until an area was full of tobacco on sticks.

The bigger the stalks of tobacco, the better the crop, the more money, the harder the work. Its a tough job, one that I'm glad I was only helping and don't have to actually do.
Stacey, Linda and I went into town for lunch and once back at the house, Linda and Stacey decided to go to Byrdstown for a 'festival'. I stayed home and watched the NASCAR race at Bristol. They came home a little before dark.