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43 Chapter 1 Sowing the Seeds and Setting the Tobacco The work that Martin was engaged in on that March day when I first met him was the preparation of the beds in which his tobacco plants would germinate and grow. Because tobacco seeds are too delicate to plant directly in the field, they must be started in a protected environment and then transplanted. As we talked, he stretched thick black plastic across wooden frames built directly on the ground, weighted it down, and filled the plastic-lined frames with water. Later, he would plant seeds in polystyrene trays filled with peatmoss -based soil, and the trays—each about thirteen by twenty-six inches, with about 250 cells1 —would then be set in the water to float in these float beds. Fertilizer would be added to the water and the beds covered at night and uncovered during the warm days of spring. Before the 1990s, all growers started their tobacco plants directly in the ground in one-hundred-foot-by-twelve-foot plant beds. The preparation of the plant beds was a major task that evolved over the years but retained the same basic parameters: ground was cleared, weeds were killed, seeds were planted and covered, the beds were weeded, and the plants were individually pulled and transplanted into neat rows in the field. Since at least colonial times, through the 1950s and ’60s, tobacco beds were “burned,” which meant that burning wood or brush in some form was used to kill the weeds. Early on, burning logs were slowly rolled across the beds, and later, fires were built on metal frames that were then dragged across the beds, resting for a period on every part of the bed. Burning the beds was an event that took place either in the late fall or in the early spring, depending on the practices of a particular farmer. For the children 44 The Burley ToBAcco crop yeAr, Then And now in some farm families, burning the beds was an annual event to look forward to, as it meant staying up late to monitor and move the fires, perhaps roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. In the 1960s, it became common practice to gas the beds—the prepared plants beds were covered with plastic and gassed with a range of chemicals, the most popular and lasting of which was methyl bromide, which was sold in pressurized cans. Once the beds were treated for weeds, they were covered to protect the seeds as they germinated; they were fertilized and irrigated as they grew. Whether burned or gassed, some weeds would survive, and the task of weeding the plant beds without stepping on or otherwise harming the young tobacco plants was a dreaded job. When it came time to set tobacco—as transplanting the young plants into the field is called—individual plants were pulled from these plant beds and brought to the field, either in baskets or wooden crates or wrapped in burlap bundles. Women often pulled plants as men prepared the ground for setting or started setting—one woman commented to me that it seemed like whenever there were plants to be pulled the men suddenly had ground that needed to be worked— but many people told me it was a job that “everyone” did. Pulling plants is often described as one of the worst aspects of tobacco work because it meant being bent over for long periods of time, trying to get through the bed without stepping on plants, which often meant perching precariously on a wooden board that was balanced across the bed. During a 2005 interview, Kathleen Bond described it vividly : “It’s hot and you’re like, either standing on your head or squatting down and, you know, neither one is comfortable and you have to—you can’t like really walk out into the bed because you, you know, step on plants and ruin them and you have to—I don’t know, it just, it makes you sore and the sweat’s running in your eyes and deer flies get on your back and bite you.” By the late 1990s, the vast majority of farmers moved from plant beds to water beds or float beds. The practices involved in starting the plants from seed provide one example of my statement that there is less typicality today. Many tobacco farmers have built greenhouses that house their float beds. Greenhouse float beds produce more usable plants. Robert Pearce of the...

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