Tobacco
Farming in South Carolina
Tobacco was
raised as one of the farm family's cash crops. As tenants on the
land where they lived, they had to pay rent to their landlord in
tobacco every year. Though the Conners owned their own land, they
still had other major expenses. They used the tobacco to pay their
taxes, tithes to the church and whatever supplies they needed.
Because tobacco
was so important to the farm family, they tended to it very carefully
throughout the growing season. The seed was sown in a small tobacco
patch in March. Tobacco seed is as fine as dust, so it must be
mixed with dirt to allow even sowing. Lettuce seed is sown with
the tobacco seed and a border of mustard is sown around the outside
of the patch. Eighteenth century farmers had learned that sowing
lettuce and mustard with the tobacco would distract flies and
worms from eating the young tobacco plants.
While the
tobacco was beginning to grow in the patch, the fields must be
prepared for it or plowed.
Once the
tobacco had grown to about six inches high, usually around mid-May,
it was transplanted to the field. During or after a good rain,
when the soil was wet, the young tobacco plants were carefully
pulled from the patch and one planted in the raised rows. Then
the tobacco had to be constantly tended until it was ready to
harvest. As the plants grew bigger, they had to be primed, suckered
and topped. Priming is pulling off the lower leaves of the plant
when they begin to turn yellow and wither. Suckering is pulling
off new buds that form on the main stalk to prevent the plant
from branching out. Topping is breaking off the top part of the
plant to prevent it from flowering and going to seed (three or
four plants are allowed to flower and go to seed so there will
be seed for planting next year's crop). All of these things are
done to make the plant have bigger, broader leaves. All the while,
the plants had to be kept free of tobacco worms that would eat
and destroy the crop. Turkeys were sometimes herded through the
field to help pick the worms off the plants.
The plants
are ready to harvest when the leaves are long, broad, deep green
and beginning to crinkle, usually in mid to late August. The plants
were cut with a knife, slit up the middle of the stalk and laid
in the sun for a couple of hours to wilt. Then they were gathered
up, placed on tobacco sticks and hung in the tobacco barn to cure
for several weeks. Great care was taken to maintain the proper
atmosphere within the curing barn.
Harry Conner
tells of his memories of gathering the tobacco leaves when he
was growing up on the family farm. Harry said he would walk down
the row, bent over, and picking a stalk with one hand and tucking
it under his other arm until the stack under his arm grew too
large to hold onto. Then the stack would be dumped onto a cart
for transport to the curing barn.
 The
leaves are cured when they have turned brown and leathery. The
cured leaves were stripped from the stalk, the thick vein that
runs down the middle of each leaf was stripped off, and the leaves
were tied into bundles of eight to ten leaves. These
bundles are called hands of tobacco.
By the end
of the 19th century, South Carolinians were growing a new variety
of tobacco, "bright leaf". Bright leaf tobacco, which
turned a lemon yellow during curing, was a lighter, finer leaf
and sold at premium prices. Because of the oversupply of cotton
and its increasing unprofitability, "bright leaf" tobacco
production was spreading throughout the sandy areas of the coastal
plain.
By 1890,
Marion County had its own tobacco market and had become a major
tobacco growing region.
photos
from "Progressive Farmer", used with permission
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