[AT] OT Swedish tobacco farming

[John Hall]

The "stringer" you mentioned was referred to as a "looper" here. The IH 
dealer dad worked for was a dealer for Hawk tobacco loopers (made in 
Canada if I recall). Even today at 87 yrs old, daddy still carries the 2 
or 3 short arm series allen wrenches in his pocket required to work on 
those machines. Somehow he was the one chosen to learn how to work on 
those machines. So when summer and fall came he left the parts counter 
and headed out on service calls a few times a week.

John Hall



On 9/29/2017 11:42 PM, Spencer Yost wrote:
> I showed this to a friend who grew up on a tobacco farm.   He is a few years older than me so his recollections have no bearing on the modern reality of US tobacco production but he basically said:  " this is nothing I grew up on".  But he also said some of the things the others on the list said:
>
> Is this burley?  But even burley they don't pull up the whole plant .  They used to "tent" the leaves on  stalks in the ground here.
> Is flue cured?
> Is is hybrid?
> He was mortified by the suckers and the lack of topping.
> Said his grandfather was rolling in his grave (-;
>
> But he absolutely loved seeing it and talked for 20 minutes on memories he never mentioned even though I have known him for 15 years.  Thanks so much for sharing.
>
> PS: I moved to the state of Georgia, which raises quite a bit of tobacco too, in the 7th grade.  One of the first friends I made in seventh grade that very first September nearly lost a finger to a stringer(that's what we call the thing that "knits" the leaves so you can hang them.).  By the way, that friend was a Hispanic girl we called "Tony"(not sure we ever knew her formal name) and she was from a migrant labor family.  Never saw her again after that fall but have wondered to this day if that finger ever healed up alright.   Looked bad as I remember.
>
> Spencer Yost
>
>> On Sep 29, 2017, at 2:49 PM, Mattias Kessén <davidbrown950 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> They had removed flower stalks so i assumed the ones they harvested were
>> new. The clip said nothing about drying outdoors or indoors or both.
>>
>> Med vänlig hälsning
>>
>> Mattias Kessén
>>
>>
>> Sent from my not so smart phone.
>>
>> Den 29 sep. 2017 20:11 skrev "charlie hill" <charliehill at embarqmail.com>:
>>
>>> Mattias,  I didn't need the translation.  I feel like I have a PhD in
>>> tobacco.  LOL.  What your video clip shows is similar to the way
>>> "Burley" tobacco is handled.  Actually it's kind of a hybrid between
>>> burley which is air dried on the stalk and flue cured which used to
>>> be "tied" bundles of leaves.  Now days here it's all mechanical
>>> and highly automated.  I looked for some youtube videos of recent
>>> harvest of flue cured tobacco but didn't find anything I thought
>>> would adequately tell the story.
>>>
>>> In my days on the tobacco farm we pulled (picked or cropped) the leaves
>>> (different terminology for the same method depending on what area you lived
>>> in)
>>> two or three leaves at the time starting at the bottom of the stalk and
>>> working up.
>>> most plants had somewhere between 18 and 21 leaves or so and the process
>>> took
>>> about 6 weeks. The plants were as much as 6' tall and the leaves vastly
>>> larger than
>>> anything in the video you shared.
>>>
>>> Charlie
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mattias Kessén
>>> Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 1:50 AM
>>> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
>>> Subject: [AT] OT Swedish tobacco farming
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I thought I should share this clip since some of you are so interested in
>>> tobacco farming. The language might be a bit challenging for some of you.
>>>
>>> http://www.atl.nu/lantbruk/har-skordas-svensk-tobak/
>>> Mattias
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
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