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planting the tobacco
You start as early as January and you plant the seeds in a seedbed in a protected area with pine branches to protect them from the cold. Make sure that you water and weed the seedlings! -
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Growing tobacco
Growing tobacco was extremely time consuming and required a lot of work, so the planters bought slaves to do the hard labor. Slaves did most work on a plantation. -
cleared tobacco fields
In the earlier winter monthes the forests were cleared to make new tobacco fields because four or five years earlier, tobacco had ruined our previous fields and had to be constantly prepared. -
transplanting
After about 2 months in the seedbeds, the tobacco plants are now large enough to transplant to another field. In preperation for planting, the soil on the field had to be hoed into small mounds of dirt. Each plant was set in a moun to give it plenty of growing space. -
Cleaning the plants
As the tobacco grew in the fields it had to be checked for tobacco worms and the slaves had to pull the weeds. The only way to remove the worms is to go around the field picking them off the leaves. -
Harvesting the tobacco
The tobacco has just been harvested. The entire stalk of each plant was cut at its bottom at left to wilt. Then a hole was cut in each stalk so it could be put on a long stick, a tobacco stake. As many as eight stalks could be put on a stake. Then they were hung in tobacco barns to dry for six to ten weeks. -
Taking down the stakes.
Now that the leaves on the stakes are dry, we've taken them down from the stalks. The slaves did it often on rainy days leaves so the leaves would'nt crumble and break. -
Hogsheads of tobbaco
Our tobacco was packed inside of barrels called hogsheads. Hogsheads can hold 200 to 500 pounds of tobacco! -
Rolling Roads
Our hogsheads of tobacco had to transported from our barn down to the wharf. Our workers rolled the hogsheads down roads that later became known as "rolling roads"