making hay

[mattdavis11]

I thought this thread was going to be about the first track you guys raced on.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

Paul, was your farm a central processing facility or did one farm use all those barns? Ohio tobacco farmers co-operated drying barns because the individual farms were so small.

My wife is working from home this morning, headed in to NAVAIR in an hour or so.

She said everyone banned together for barn space. As you know, tobacco is hard on the soil so small farms over rotated crops and had excess barn space.

On hot, humid days, the big barn still smells like curing tobacco.

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

...I always wanted to get back to farming as a retirement hobby.

I am headed the other direction!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by mattdavis11

I thought this thread was going to be about the first track you guys raced on.

Yeah, but if that was you last week, I'm not sure it counts.

[IROC]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

My grandfather had a tobacco base that he leased out. He acquired it back in the 1930s. He never grew tobacco that I know of, but he made some good money off of it over the years. Most of the farms that grew tobacco in Ohio were an acre or so in size.

I think they used to call them "allotments" around here. You were only allowed to grow a certain amount of tobacco (your "allotment") but it was pretty lucrative so even here in East TN (which is mountainous and not great for farming) you would see little patches of land with tobacco growing on it.

I haven't seen a tobacco plant in probably 20 years.

[Jolly Amaranto]

Originally Posted by masraum

The other interesting thing is that after they cut the hay, it was a feast for the turkey vultures (oddly, I didn't see any black vultures which is what I usually find here). There have been probably 10-20 vultures in the field for the past couple of days. I'm guessing they've been snaking on rats and mice and snakes that didn't make it out of the way of the cutting.

Turkey vultures have a keen sense of smell. This one detected a dead critter, a squirrel or a bunny, in the neighbors back yard and landed outside my window to zero in on it. It eventually found it and settled down for a meal.


Then I see another big bird swoop down over the fence. This time a black vulture. They can't smell too well but have very keen eye sight. Plus they tend to be bullies. It was probably circling around way overhead and saw the other bird chowing down so came in to investigate. It pushed the turkey vulture aside and took over. I peeked over the fence to get this shot.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

The farm I own is a former tobacco farm.
...snip...
It was very profitable in this area, however.

Tobacco is the most addictive drug known to man, true story


Hot humid days the barn smells like curing tobacco still eh? So between April and September every year then

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by IROC

I think they used to call them "allotments" around here.

There you go, putn’ on airs. We don’t use three syllable words in Ohio.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

It was very profitable in this area, however.

The government made sure it was profitable. A certain amount of tobacco from each farmer got price support from the government. That was the allotment or base amount you would grow, pretty much a guaranteed profit. Any amount you grew beyond that was sold on the open market for whatever you could get.
My grandfather had an allotment that he leased out to another farmer. He basically rented out the right to receive a government subsidy.

[ckelly78z]

I spent a few Summers in my youth helping out a local farmer with hay. I always seemed to get stuck in the loft stacking bales off the end of the hay elevator....extremely hot, and dusty, but satisfying to see the end result.

40 years later, I am still handling hay for our two horses, and two mini donkeys. We get about 400 bales a year, and can get most of them into our ventilated shipping container CONEX. With just my wife, and I working to haul, and stack, we get 100 bales at a time on my 18' car hauler trailer, spend a couple hours stacking, and then jump in the pool with a stiff drink.

[wdfifteen]

^^
Haying was hot, dirty work. Horse hay we grew wasn’t so bad, it was mostly timothy or broam grass. Alfalfa hay has leaves that come off or crumble into dust and get all over you, stick to your sweat, and itch. The hay mow would get up to over 100 degrees.
That’s where I learned the value of an education. The town boys we hired were working their asses off pitching bales in the heat.
But I knew how to drive a tractor.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Jolly Amaranto

Turkey vultures have a keen sense of smell. This one detected a dead critter, a squirrel or a bunny, in the neighbors back yard and landed outside my window to zero in on it. It eventually found it and settled down for a meal.


Then I see another big bird swoop down over the fence. This time a black vulture. They can't smell too well but have very keen eye sight. Plus they tend to be bullies. It was probably circling around way overhead and saw the other bird chowing down so came in to investigate. It pushed the turkey vulture aside and took over. I peeked over the fence to get this shot.

Most of the time when I see vultures around here, they are black vultures and probably eating deer or other roadkill. What you've posted above helps me understand why the other day, I saw 10-20 turkey vultures and no black vultures. The small critters in/under the hay weren't that visible, but were probably easy for the turkey vultures to smell.

The other day they were using the tedder that looked similar to this.



Today they are back with the rake.


which is leading the JD 535 baler


This country livin' stuff is educational!

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

The government made sure it was profitable. A certain amount of tobacco from each farmer got price support from the government. That was the allotment or base amount you would grow, pretty much a guaranteed profit. Any amount you grew beyond that was sold on the open market for whatever you could get.

I didn't know that. Here, the big Tobacco Auction was in Hughesville, Maryland. When I moved here in 1988 it was still a big, big deal.

Originally Posted by ckelly78z

With just my wife, and I working to haul, and stack, we get 100 bales at a time on my 18' car hauler trailer, spend a couple hours stacking, and then jump in the pool with a stiff drink.

I know the drill! We still have a horse and a pony and board two others...I remain Mongo the Stable Boy, 100 bales at a time.

When I was a kid, we got all our hay in the Central Valley of California: Three metal wire alfalfa. My Dad was too cheap to actually have the hay delivered so he made arrangements for us to pick the bales out of the field.

We had two trucks and two horse trailers, enclosed, and off we'd go, three trips in a day...the Joad family circus.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

The government made sure it was profitable. A certain amount of tobacco from each farmer got price support from the government. That was the allotment or base amount you would grow, pretty much a guaranteed profit. Any amount you grew beyond that was sold on the open market for whatever you could get.
My grandfather had an allotment that he leased out to another farmer. He basically rented out the right to receive a government subsidy.

Back when the government got into price supports for farmers, the government figured lots of farmers would accept the money to NOT grow a crop, then turn around and grow it anyway for open market. There was so much cheating that the USGS started doing aerial photography in the 1930s of the entire US, cities, town and counties found the aerials useful for other purposes. Since then the USGS flies the entire state when the states kick in some money.

The last few years back to 2003 are available, on line for free if you own mapping software needed to open the special format files (Mr. Sid files). The older stuff back to WW2 era is available from USGS if you pay for a scan.

The really old stuff is only at the national archives. It is a real pain to get those, as we have to hire an archivist that has the license to go into the archives, and scan the negative and they all have low end off the shelf flat bed scanners, not the 70 grand and up photogrammetric scanners that are needed for a good scan.

With the section, township and range of a farm I can make you an image of the farm from 2003 pretty cheap. The older ones get more expensive as we have to pay for the scans, but I can likely get a 1950s image of any farm for under $80.

All because so many farmers were willing to cheat on free government money.

[Jolly Amaranto]

I have spent a lot of time staking hay bales in the hay loft of dairy barns at farms belonging to various relatives in Wisconsin. Also some time on trailers/wagons following the baler. It was usually during "Vacation" but when you show up and expect to be fed and have a place to sleep, they tend to put you to work. Here is a photo of me going up the "elevator" into the loft on one occasion.

Speaking of working vacations, when my father-in-law a his cousins get together they reminisce about their visits to their grand parents farm in southern Virginia. The "reunions" always seemed to coincide with the tobacco harvest. They cut the leaves, loaded them on to sledges pulled by mules, tied the leaves to poles to hang in the tobacco barns to be dried, tending the fires that heated the tobacco barn...etc. The tobacco barn was really a log cabin with no windows and a fire place on the out side to heat the place for drying the leaves. However there was one job they all wanted. It was called dobbing. They would mix a bucket of mud and close themselves into a tobacco barn, before the leaves were hung up, which would be almost pitch black inside. Wherever they saw light coming in between the logs or roof shingles they would throw a glob of mud into the crack if it was out of reach or even if it was in reach, just for the challenge.