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- Little baby tobacco!

2
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- Absolutely.

3
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This is the more modern
way of starting plants.

4
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In the old times, they would
start these in the ground

5
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in plant beds.

6
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- Are these floating?

7
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- So these are absolutely floating.

8
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They're floating in trays.

9
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They have like a great
root system on them.

10
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- Holy cow!

11
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- And what they're trying to do

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is to get the roots to develop
before the plants develop.

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It's kind of like planting spinach.

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Really soft soil, and they
plant each individual seed,

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and each tobacco seeds about
the size of a poppy seed,

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they're just tiny, tiny, tiny.

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Each individual plant is pulled out,

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put in the ground by hand.

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They plow down the middle
to keep the weeds out.

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Then they chopped out between the plants,

21
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and they might do that two or three times.

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And then, they top it,

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they put the sucker oil that goes down

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that'll keep the suckers from coming off.

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They cut every one of
these plants by hand,

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and then they lay it on
the ground, they pile it.

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And then, each individual
plant is spiked onto a stick.

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And then, each one of those sticks

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is picked up and put
onto a scaffold wagon.

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And then, they're unloaded
from the scaffold wagon

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into the barn.

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And then, they're taken out of the barn

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and taken off the stick
and put on a flat wagon.

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And then, the flat wagon is
taken to the stripping room,

35
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and then each individual
leaf is picked off.

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So just a little bit of labor involved.

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This is a fire-cured tobacco barn.

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Before you could just go
to Lowe's or Home Depot

39
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and buy lumber that was cut,

40
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you know, and you could butt it together

41
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and it would be smooth.

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You had to have some kind of
way to fill up the cracks.

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If you put sawdust and then slabs,

44
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and you have one little poof of air,

45
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you have all of this plant material

46
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in this big, wooden barn,

47
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and it just goes poof, and it burns up.

48
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The slabs that they use
to fire the tobacco barn

49
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are the scraps that it took
from when they make the barn.

50
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And the way the fire goes

51
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is they put the slabs down,
and they lay 'em long ways.

52
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And then, they put sawdust in here,

53
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usually about knee deep,
you know, 24 inches deep,

54
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and it's a recipe
proprietary to each farmer.

55
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And it's only built up to about
the concrete wall down here,

56
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because they don't want
it to touch the wood.

57
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And then, if you notice when
you look around at eye level,

58
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nevermind the door that's
open, at eye level,

59
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everything that's eye
level has been sealed shut,

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so there are no air gaps.

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But when you look up, they've
left cracks in the barn,

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because you want the smoke

63
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to go all the way to the top and through.

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So like a chimney will draw,

65
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these barns draw

66
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so that all the smoke is sucked up

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all the way through and out.

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Every tobacco barn has a
pile of tobacco sticks.

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And the stalk goes on here,

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and then it hangs across these tiers,

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and you can tell the age of the sticks.

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This has been milled in a modern sawmill.

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You can see the saw blades down the side.

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When you get in these older tobacco barns,

75
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it's usually fat on one end,

76
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pointy on the other end.

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It was split out with a knife.

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Some of these sticks
have been in the barns

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since the barns were built.

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Every person in the family,
for maybe 100 years,

81
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has handled the stick,

82
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because they put it in
the field, put it up,

83
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take it down, back and forth.

84
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So if there's a such
thing as a piece of wood

85
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that like holds a memory,

86
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it's like you're literally
holding the blood and sweat

87
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of all the people that came before you

88
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that were in this tobacco barn.

89
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When they hang tobacco in the barn,

90
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you have to climb up in there.

91
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So you have like a stick
that's 100 pounds or so,

92
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and you have to hand it up to the person,

93
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because their feet are
gonna be right there,

94
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and they do it when it's the
hottest part of the summer.

95
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So you're in this barn, that's
not very well ventilated,

96
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it's really hot and you've been outside,

97
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and always heard that you're not a man

98
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until you've had another
man's ball sweat in your face,

99
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because it's just, you know, gravity.

100
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You're standing straddle leg up there,

101
00:04:08,430 --> 00:04:09,540
you know, when you reach up,

102
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you're gonna get a big eyeball of sweat.

103
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- And that's great.

104
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Thank you to those that
have sacrificed so lovingly.

105
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- There were literally
millions of pounds of tobacco

106
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that were being produced

107
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just to supply a little
bitty, tiny Springfield.

108
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When we were walking around,

109
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you could see these
buildings are not small,

110
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maybe there's 35, 40 of them in town,

111
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and this was the economics.

112
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And if you can imagine,

113
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all of the tobacco that
was sold in these buildings

114
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was grown within 50 miles.

115
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- All the tobacco would then be outside?

116
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- They would put it in a big line,

117
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and then they would come by
and they would auction it off.

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And on one side of the row
would be the auctioneer,

119
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and on the other side of the row

120
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would be the tobacco buyers.

121
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It's like makers of chocolate or,

122
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you know, like other fine foods,

123
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like artisan kinds of things,

124
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it's like, it's a process,

125
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it takes generations to learn how to do,

126
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and it takes years to master.

127
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Let's say if they get 40 good crops,

128
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so you've learned, you know,

129
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like through your
grandparents or your parents,

130
00:05:13,350 --> 00:05:15,240
and then you get to be
20, well, when you're 20,

131
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they're not gonna turn
over the farm to you.

132
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When you're 30, until the time you're 70,

133
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that's all you have to
like master your craft.

134
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Now we're at the point
where the 70-year-olds,

135
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their grandchildren and their children

136
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are working off the farm.

137
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Unless somebody documents it
right now like how to do this,

138
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it's gonna be like blacksmithing,

139
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but that knowledge that's been passed on,

140
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for hundreds of years, is
fixing to like just disappear.

141
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When you think about like
all of these things in here,

142
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and like a lot of them
came from the Midwest

143
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or the Rust Belt.

144
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As we moved into an Industrial Revolution

145
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where they had more
production in the North

146
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and the raw materials were
coming from the South,

147
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whether it was cotton, or tobacco,

148
00:06:02,970 --> 00:06:06,360
or sugar, or iron ore,
or coal from Kentucky,

149
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:08,580
and the whiskey and the cigars,

150
00:06:08,580 --> 00:06:11,490
and the raw materials that were
used to generate that wealth

151
00:06:11,490 --> 00:06:13,740
were coming from here.

152
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You'd always see the
guys sitting at the bar,

153
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drinking their whiskey,

154
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stirring their whiskey with their cigar,

155
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and these great, lavish houses.

156
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It's really a full circle
when you think about it,

157
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that you're in this building

158
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full of things that were
purchased by wealthy people

159
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in a loose floor that is no longer.

160
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So it's like literally an
artifact in an artifact,

161
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and it really tells the story
of culturally what's happening

162
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without ever saying food or tobacco.

163
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It's just the story of people.

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- Right.
- Mhmm.

165
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It's like what do we value in our lives?

166
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I mean, it's like, you know, chandeliers,

167
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and glass lamps, and art,

168
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and furniture, and all of the things,

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ironically enough, stored
at a tobacco loose floor.