Will Miller Sophie Brooks

By Mrs. Mills
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    Sophie and Will

    The tobacco season is very long and hard labor since tobacco has all of these stages. With all of the steps and treatment, planters needed slaves to tend for the tobacco since it is so tentative and needy. Growing this crop is very difficlut labor but England was demanding it so the colonies had to grow it. with slaves and work hard in the tobacco season.

  • Tobbaco Season starts

    In January the tobbacco season starts and the tobbaco fields are cleared.The seeds then are planted in seed beds in a protected area. They were watered and weeded while protected by branches.

  • Transporting the seeds

    When the seeds for two months are in the seedbeds, they are big enough to transport to large mounds with plenty of room to grow. Before they tranported, the field was hoed into small mounds for the tobbaco.

  • Removing the tobbaco worms and weeds

    As the tobbaco grew, the fields had to be removed of the tobbaco worms , so they wouldn't demolish the tobbaco growing. To rid of them, they had to pick them off everysingle leaf at one time. Also, any weeds had to be removed around the plants so they could be watered.

  • Harvesting the Tobacco

    In late summer or early fall the tobacco was ready to be harvested. The stalk of the tobacco was trimmed and was left to sit and wilt. A hole was poked into the tobbaco stalk and was put onto a stick so it could be hung and dried.

  • Tobacco is dried

    Since the tobacco had holes in the stalks, they were hung in tobacco barns to dry for 6-10 weeks.

  • Leaves were dry

    When the leaves on the tobacco were dry, they were stripped from the stalk and bundled into '"hands" or 10-20 leaves wrapped together.

  • "Hands" Are Put into Barrels

    The bunches of tobacco were put into hogsheads or barrels. Each barrel could hold between 200-500 pounds of tobacco and were rolled down to the docks on a road which is called "Rolling Road" because they rolled it down this specific road.

  • Tobacco is shipped

    Finally the tobacco is loaded onto the ships after they rolled it down to the docks and shipped to England.