If you've ever seen a Middle Tennessee tobacco farm, it's an impressive site. Fields of large, green leaves in the Spring and barns full of drying tobacco in the Autumn. When Joseph (Joe) A. Hill was a tobacco farmer in the late 1800's and early 1900's, it was a manual process. Clear the land, plant seedlings in the spring, weeding fields, removing buds and insects by hand, harvesting leaves in the middle of Summer, hanging the leaves with tobacco sticks in the barn, curing the tobacco, and taking it to market in tobacco baskets.
Active markets still existing in Middle Tennessee and I've been lucky enough to experience one. It's like stepping back in time as the farmers load their crops into a large barn and await the buyers.
These tax and tobacco receipts are from Joe Hill's crops ranging from 1895 to 1922. It's hard to believe the receipts have survived this long. If you look closely at the agreement from The Imperial Tobacco Co of Kentucky, you'll see that Joe estimates a total of 2500 lbs of tobacco for 1922.
I looked up how many plants make up a pound and it's roughly 4, so that's a lot of man hours needed to bring such a harvest to market!
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