Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Farming...

I bet that's burley Tobacco set out by a setter that had two people riding it, reaching for plants and trying to keep up?

Its not a seed but a seedling?

What kind of Tobacco James?

I am at a lost to why those of you with pig problems don't won't us to kill them ? I understand the part about controlling who's on your land, but Texas fever and making a dime on every dollar, well let the hogs do what hogs do. I know nothing is free in Texas!

Burley Tobacco plants are grown in a special Bed, so they were when we raised it. Those beds were 50 feet or longer each and the ground was treated with gas or chemicals to assist the plants and to control weeds. About May or so we pulled the plants during planting time and used a setter behind the tractor. Our setter seated two people side by side.

Back in the day on steep non tractor ground we used a manual hand setter, what a bastard, you had to carry the plants and water along the rows.

I'd bet that's Burley Tobacco, if its in Kentucky......

Just looked at the Montana weather radar. Looks like good rain over much of the state. Jim, did you get any?

Dang Jim I didnt know y'all had rattlers

I dont know why, but I had a feeling earlier that it was going to be a bad rattler year.

A couple weeks ago a fellow up north of me was bit in the leg and nearly died. They mercy flighted him.

Now today my daughter gets bit on the toe of her boot.

I have pretty much been vindicated on the topic of wearing REAL boots and shoes when outside.

Storm just went over and we got 1 and a half one hundredths.

We got almost an inch last night.

Don't think it will last long but is was needed.

Now that the pump is primed maybe we can get some more,3 or 4 inches would be nice.

Jim that sounds a lot like our last few days putting out pairs. Had about 30 calves with frozen ears from the brutal spring. Most of which had lost their tags. Trying to pair cow and calves together when the calves don’t have tags is not an easy task. Ended up retagging them as we went but. Ended up with at the end one cow. With one calf that was not hers. Checked every pasture trying to find an upset cow and calf that we mismatched.... but have not found anything bellering bad. And nothing from the real close bunches came back home. So hauled them out to our pasture with 103 pairs and am hoping it will correct itself. Took a 10 Hour day to do a 1 hour job. That’s efficiency at its best.

We just caught a rain haven’t checked the gauge. I’m guessing will be .30-40 maybe in about 20 mins. Real nasty clouds lots of wind

That's burley, but it was set out by 4 Mexicans riding on a 4 row setter. The newer tobacco setters are designed where you only need one person per row to drop the plants, as compared to the old setters that required one person per row. Now, if a person was good enough, and the tractor driver drove slow enough, one person could handle a row by themselves.

We grow 3 types of tobacco here....burley, dark fire cured, and dark air cured. Burley is used for cigarettes, the other for smokeless and cigars. The money is in dark fire cured, but it's also requires the most labor. It is cured in barns using smoke and heat, which means that every year, several tobacco barns are lost to fire. A good crop of dark fired, with a good contract, can easily be worth $10-12,000 an acre. That's gross, not net.

Tobacco plants are started from seed in greenhouses, and grown on water beds in trays that hold around 200 plants. They're usually cut off a few times to toughen them up, and also to regulate their growth, before being set out in the field. A tobacco setter drops water around the plant to help it live. The old way of growing tobacco, where the plants were grown outside in plant beds, meant that each plant had to be pulled from the bed by hand. Not only was that time consuming, but the plants did not have as good a root system as do the plants grown in greenhouses.

I'll try and get some pictures of tobacco being set out if I can. The neighbor who rents my cropland still has another field to set out, so maybe I can catch him in the field and get a pic.

Ahhhhh, the Mossberg strikes again!


Ain't farming fun? The bigger the outfit, the more things to go wrong/break/need upkeep. On the farm I work for part-time I am always amazed at how patient and easy-going Tom is during planting/harvest times. When 7-8 tractors are working at the same time, pulling wagons, planters, tillage equipment or working some machine it's an every-day occurrence that something breaks down. I don't know how he does it.

I have no clue about anything with planting tobacco, other than the place where I hunted in Kentucky when I was stationed there in 01-02 having a small patch. Isn't this saying the same thing for both setters?

JamesJr pretty much summed it up, sounds like he has a lot of experience growing different types of Tobacco. I am just adding a little info here as to some of my experiences with Burley way back years ago, I was a young boy back then but still helped out. I am not trying to dispute any of JamesJr's info, things are done a lot different now, like the plants being grown in a green house, until time to set out. We grew them in beds because we didn't have green houses and thats the way it had been done for many years. I am sure there could be different harvest methods that he does, I suppose he has to still put the Burley tobacco on sticks in the field? I understand that flue cured leaves are pulled off the stalk in the field. Flue cured is grown further east in my state several miles from here, but even less farmers grow it these days. The farmer that we lease our deer hunting property from, use to grow over 100 acres of flue cured tobacco years ago, but he took the buy out and does not grow any now.

Yelp, that's how far tobacco growing has come over the years, at least for the ones that still grow it, those are mainly big acreage guys that buy up the acreage from the smaller farmers. Use to about every farming family grew Burley tobacco around here in these hills. It was a great way to supplement the income, for some that was the main income. There was the buy out years ago and its pretty rare to see Burley tobacco in the fields around here these days.


When I was a kid, my grandpa grew about 10 acres of Burley, we had a one row setter that two people rode behind the tractor. My uncle also grew tobacco, but he used an old hand setter which as slow, thank goodness he didn't have much acreage. Of course the tobacco grew tall in the rolls, some good crops were way over my head and had leaves wider than both my hands put together, thumb to thumb. Up in the summer we had to go through and get the suckers off of the plants. Late summer we cut the stalks, wooden tobacco sticks were driven in the ground and you put a sharp spud on the end and speared the tobacco stalks onto the wooden stakes. Left it in the field for a few days for it to wilt, then loaded it on a truck or trailer, hauled it to the barn and hung it on tear poles to cure out, usually till November. I mentioned the barn tear poles, they were spaced close enough together so that the tobacco sticks would reach on two ends. Also there could be 3 or 4 levels of tear poles, depending on how tall the barn was. That meant that a person had to stand (straddle across one foot on two different poles) on each level of tear poles in order to hang it in the barn, they had to have good balance. A Person at ground level (worst job dirt and falling debry fell in ones face) reached it up to the first guy, then he reached it on up to another then so on till they filled the top level of the tear poles. After they filled each level they just worked their way down to the barn floor.
When we got it down in November for market prep, we put it in a special room in the barn and started working it. You had to work it when it was in case (higher air moisture content) so the leaves were not so brittle. Way back in the day, we tied the tobacco leaves together, had three or four grades of leaves. Once the leaves were bundled together we put them on the old Tobacco wooden baskets. Those baskets were pretty dang heavy, but that is how it was hauled to the market. Then some smart person decides to invent a wooden tobacco bailer, it was basically a press that used a car bumper jack. You took the top off, put the tobacco leaves in and you put the top back on, attached the jack and pressed that down making a nice square bail of tobacco, that had strings holding it tight together. Those bails were a lot easier to handle and load, that was the new method of getting the tobacco to market, which I am guessing JamesJr does this, unless there is another method, that's come along since we quit tobacco farming.

Sorry a long post there, just my experience as a country boy at a young age, growing Burley Tobacco.

In my post I said I let folks hunt pigs for free.

Jim

We got 1 1/2" Sunday night with very little run off. Was really glad to get it. Maybe the remaining Sudan will come on up. Lord, please send more rain.

Jim

Well in texas, you are one of......well one, and thank you ! If I ever get back there I will be in touch.

My bad.......I meant to say that the older tobacco setters required 2 people per row. The newer ones are a different design.