[AT] IH Grain Binder

[charlie hill]

yep it's the same story.  Actually some of the ex-tobacco farmers here are 
making a living now days tending grain.   They grow corn followed by wheat 
that they harvest.  Prior to harvest or just after they sow or drill the 
wheat field with soy beans.  I think some are following wheat with Milo 
(grain sorghum) also.  This kind of rotation gets 3 crops in 2 years.   With 
current grain prices they are doing ok.
Big equipment means relatively low labor inputs.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: David Bruce
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 10:45 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] IH Grain Binder

Charlie,

Very much the same here in those days and today yes most all the tobacco
is grown under contract  In fact the brothers who lease my aunt's part
of the old farm are here today to finish the tobacco harvest.  With the
machinery one person dives the harvester, two people run shuttle back
and forth to the curing barn location with the trailers of harvested
leaves and they brought three laborers with them this morning.  No doubt
the corn, beans and grain were mostly for livestock back in those days.
  Now the same farmers who lease the tobacco fields also grow corn and
soybeans - sometimes wheat over the winter - more often than not as a
cover crop which is not harvested.

They and their cousins farm most of the fields here these days.
Apparently they do ok but no doubt they have huge investments in
equipment, tobacco curing barns and grain dryers.  All of them started
with help from their father's in terms of having land available and over
the years they have expanded.

Back in the stick curing days maybe 1/3 of the remaining tobacco could
be prepared for curing by 30 to 40 people total.  Later most of the
"barn help" went by the way with the advent of first automatic stringing
machines then to bulk curing - I'm sure the same happened in your area.

David
NW NC

On 10/3/2012 10:12 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> David, our farm is at the end of a 3 mile long road.   When I was a kid
> there were more tobacco farmers on that road than there are in the entire
> county now.  Every one of them made their living
> from tobacco.  Everyone raised corn and soybeans but it was primarily just
> as rotation crops and for livestock feed.  Some was sold as a cash crop 
> but
> it was never profitable.  If it had not been for needing to rotate out
> tobacco land and do something with excess land (excess because of tobacco
> allotments that were much smaller in acreage than the farm) very little
> grain would have been grown back then.
> All of the tobacco farmers left here farm on contract with one of the
> tobacco companies and I don't know of any that tend less than 100 acres of
> tobacco.   To those that don't know how labor intensive tobacco farming is
> 100 acres doesn't sound like that much but when I was a child most farm
> families lived on somewhere between 5 and 15 acres.   With large families
> and trading work with other
> farmers it was possible to make a living (not a good one but a living). 
> I
> wanted to farm but I wanted to go to college too and when my dad died when 
> I
> was 16 farming was no longer in the cards for me.
>
> Charlie
_______________________________________________
AT mailing list
http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at