I grew up on a farm whose secondary cash crop was Tobacco. Dozens of acres every year. Walking behind that cultivator planting sets was easy compared to walking the rows with a hoe in deep summer every week. Every third day I'd get dropped off in the field by a tree with a water jug, a sandwich, and two hoes, a file, and a 30-30. My dad or Uncle would pick me up at the other corner at 1. If I had the rows cleaned early I could go hunt ground hogs. If I had a dead ground hog with me it was ice cream that weekend.
We usually planted tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables at the end of each row. Some weeks I would get a 20 gauge and be told to kill as many birds as I could that were on the vegetables. Or I would be given a basket by my step mom or grandmother or aunt and told to fill it up with stuff. When I saw about 20 baskets in the truck I knew it was going to be a LONG day.
Canning day came every few weeks in the summer. We had a 1 acre plot very year with the big food crops - corn, green beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and potatoes. Picking corn took all morning and the women setup pots on gas burners in the yard. Hogs would get harvested in November and it would be the same big get together to share the work.
When I turned 8, I was given the keys to a small tractor and drove myself out towing a small wagon. When I was 9 I was driving the largest tractors everywhere. One of the proudest days of my life was being one of the drivers towing grain carts to the edge of the field to meet the grain elevator truck. I was not strong enough to move the auger and I was not allowed to mess with the PTO controls but other wise I did everything else including fueling.
Another moment was my dad asking me over the CB to shoot a ground hog while he was running the combine. I got out his 25-06, got as close as I could sneaking across the bottom, and got in the prone, and blew the ground hog in half. Half the county had to have heard him coaching me and his reaction to me getting it.
Fall was the best time. Us young boys would sit with our dads and the old men in a barn with a potbellied stove and listen to stories while wrapping tobacco. Many of the stories went back to and before the Overmountain Men. Lots of Oral history about the area was spoken during the month of December. The names and places I heard were all around me in cemeteries and street names and some in the history books at school.
Different times.
