Growing tobacco

Anyone here grow any tabacky? If so what do ya use it for smoking ,selling, recreation growing or for dusting ya chickens? What kind ya grow?

Used to grow a lot of it to sell.

My family did also. Only hand made product I recall were "twists". Leaves were tightly twisted to form a loop, and saturated with molasses I think. Men would cut off a chew with their pocket knife. Doubt it was very good. Smoking tobacco is blended with varieties from all over the world. It is aged in wood for many years, and flavors are added.

Think of moonshine vs aged whiskey. One is harsh the other smooth.

Early last century many farms in Ohio, that had lot of children for cheap labor, were quickly paid off by growing and processing tobacco. When I was a kid tobacco was still very common here. Its been years since I saw more than a few plants being grown here. My understanding is that most modern tobacco users find home grown, untreated tobacco to harsh to enjoy.

Keith

That's what I grew up on. It was called red ox twist in SE Kentucky. It'd take your head clean off, so it seemed at first. It was good tobacco. I was there in Ripley Ohio when the passing of times occurred, it like many things changed but not in the plus category for Freedom.

I have grown several varieties for personal use. A Burley, a Virginia Gold, and a Turkish. These are the basic three of a cigarette blend. The seeds are available online with pretty good growing and curing instructions. You tube also has an abundance of videos. I believe it to be a very good skill to learn, for trade stock if using it isn’t your thing.

I have grown several varieties of tobacco in Colorado, but havent figured out how to turn it into useable product.. It is a fairly fast crop.

There were two major growing areas here in WI for decades. One in south central WI near Madison and south and the other in western WI east of LaCrosse. Both raised snuff tobacco and or wrapper tobacco. Those bases are now almost all gone. My brother raised 3-6 acres for about 20 years and we would go down to help for many years. Planting, topping but mostly cutting piling, spearing and hanging. Lot of hard work and mostly done on dairy farms and many were Norwegian farmers. Dairy farmers were almost always home so they could be around to do all the intensive labor work and with larger families there was help. The crop was stripped when dried, usually on damp and humid winter days and then baled and sold by the lbs.

Bryce

The largest source of tobacco for smoking is flue cured. It is cured with forced hot air. Possible that someone could cure leaves in a hot attic in summer months. Most flue cured tobacco comes from Ga, SC, NC, and VA.

Growed alot in my area of Ky, as far back as i can remember ,my grandparents aunts uncles etc, would make plugs with leaves, tobacco and oak one on top the other, until a two inch stack was made then pressed . seen several hundred made at a time, used and traded out was actually kinda good in them days..most of the older women would make up alot of pipe tobacco, they would rather smoke pipes on sundays , so they weren't seen with tobacco juice on the wene people visited

We raised tobacco the whole time I grew up here in the mountains of Virginia what we grew was called burly tobacco it is a long broad leaf and is used for cigar and chewing tobacco and the other is flue cure which is used for cigarettes and snuff. We had a allotment of how much we could raise based on the acreage we owned there were some old timers around that didn't raise anymore but still had their allotments and we would raise them also.

I can remember my grandpaw talking of the war, all my life i thought it was world wide but as i got older i found out it was mostly in Ky. all to do with tobacco. called black tobacco wars or something like that. found it ,( Black patch tobacco wars Ky ) grandparents said you had to protect your farm ,could shoot anybody on your farm at night no questions ask and authorities would remove the body the next day for you, heresay they were alot of possum hunters committed suicide around that time.

Interesting, I didn't realize it could be grown in the North.

i have grown it here it grows well. just on a small scale. it has a beautiful flower. i have read people use it for many things like getting rid of mites in chickens and other personal uses. interesting history behind tobacco.

A lot of my kinfolk in Tn. Grew both burley and dark fire tobacco. The govt would allow them to grow it on 1/10 of an acre allotments. A large farm would maybe have up to 1.5-2 acres.

A lot of work went raising the stuff. Mostly "topping" or "Suckering". Always trying to keep the tobacco worms off it. Then cutting it, hanging it, stripping it, booking it, then finally selling it at auction.

The burly got hung hung in a large barn to cure. The dark fire had to be hung in large barns then smoked real similar to smoking pork. Once cured and smoked in the barns it was stripped off the stalk and "booked". A nasty gooyie job to say the least.

I tried rolling my own cig out of some one time. Never was desperate enough to try it again.

There is no other smell quite like the aroma of a freshly cured barn of flue cured tobacco. It was a lot of work but for much of the last century, it was one of the best returns per acre of any crop grown in the south. It was labor intensive so cheap labor was a must but it was also raised then without all of the chemicals used today. The chemicals to control the worms and prevent the suckers certainly reduced the labor required but I have always believed that a lot of the health issues with tobacco use were because of the chemicals rather than the tobacco itself.

We ran a dairy farm but also had a small allotment of flue cured tobacco that we raised for lots of years before we leased it out to someone else.

Glad to see I'm not the only person who has wondered about this... A steady intake of everything treated with pesticides, mixed with refined sugars and processed ingredients and loaded with chemical preservatives... And we wash it all down with chemically purified water.

Tobacco use has declined. But cancer is still going strong.

I wouldn't recommend anyone take up using tobacco... But when the nanny state finally manages to stamp out tobacco for good what are they going to blame the raging numbers of cancer on? Guess that's a silly question... Red meat obviously.

Mike

Fifty years ago, when I was a kid in Jr. High in western Pa., kids would sign up to work on tobacco farms during the summer break. The school office would make announcements about working there, and kids signed up in the work program. Don’t know where the farms were, or what the pay was. I recall it was a couple states away, and you obviously had to live on the farm.

Years later, I wondered who in the administration got a kick back for getting cheap labor for the farms.

Here at the stores in western Alaska, you can still buy smoked tobacco twist. The natives chew it, mostly older women, They are chopped up and mixed with the ashes of a wooden mushroom that grows on birch trees. Pretty strong stuff and will get your head spinning if your just used to Copenhagen.
They call it Black Bull.

ikmik dudenka, Jeff?

No Thanks . I chewed it for many years though.

Obviously, Jeff, you're way more intelligent than I. Pretty much haven't missed a day in more than 50 years. Really stupid habit! I often think about that new shotgun that I could buy every year if I put all that money to reasonable use rather than Skoal.

Jack

You will achieve your goal , Jack. You are strong for what you have wanted to do in life, and very successful. You will , when you feel the time is right for you.

Speaking of shotguns, I just ordered a Mossburg 12 g pump, short barrel ...dressed up in black tie smoothness of looks . On sale big time right now ...close range fun coming soon Wishing you and Miss Lisa an outstanding 2020 foresight year !

See you on the surface .....

Yea, it was harder to quit chewing, than smoking I did quit both,It took 30 years. I still have all my teeth minus the half of one I broke on a BB from my goose dinner

I quit 12 years ago wish I had never stared.

Spent alot of my teenage years working in tobacco, my family grew about 10 acres until the government starting buying up the poundage and pushed the little man out. Lot of good memories out hoeing , topping and suckering, cutting and spearing it(although when I was 14 I ran a spear thru my thumb) then we'd hang it in our "baccer barns" and during winter we'd grade it and pack it. Alot of good times with the family. I remember when we first got a little hydraulic system to pack and bale it, man we thought we were something. Lol

Been there..done it all. Wish I could go back in time, work with both of my grandfathers again!!