Working in baccer is more complicated, hard work, and dangerous than one would think. In Kentucky they grow "Burley," variety of tobacco. It is planted in rows a few feet apart. To allow for spraying, fertilizing machinery, and workers to pass through the fields.
Cutting Tobacco:
This is the really skilled part of the process. Tobacco cutters are usually older men, late thirties to fifties. They are the highest paid of anyone.
Tobacco plants can grow to five to six feet in hight with the main stem three inches or more in diameter.
The cutter uses a hatchet like knife with a handle about a three feet long. The blade is approximately six inches long and four inches wide
Wooden, "sticks," one inch by three inches and four feet long and pointed at each end are distributed along the rows.
The cutter has a round steel spear point tool that fits over the end of the stick.
The cutter takes a stick and jams it into the ground, places the spear point over the end of the stick. He bends a tobacco plant slightly and chops through the stem near the ground. The cutter then lifts the plant above end of the spear point and splits the cut end of the plant, sliding it down the stick. He fills the stick with five or six plants and moves down the row then repeats the process. Experienced cutters move along pretty fast. This leaves the tobacco plants in a pile with the stick sticking up.
Loading up the tobacco:
A tractor pulling a large, long flat bed trailer with two guys on it is maneuvered between the rows of cut and piled tobacco. Two other guys walk along either side of the trailer lifting and passing the sticks loaded with tobacco up to the guys on the trailer.They stack the piles front to back along the trailer. When you are a novice this is the first job you do. Humping those sticks full of wet heavy tobacco onto the trailer. When the trailer is loaded we all hop up on the trailer and head to the barn.
As I have said in Baccer Interview the barns are huge, long wide and tall.
The structure:
About ten feet above the dirt floor the, "rails," start. The bottom two rails are parallel and about three feet apart. The next rails are about four feet above the bottom rails This continues up to the roof of the barn. Which can be three, four or five rail sets. Now one guy climbs onto the first rails with one foot on each rail. The next guy climbs to the next set of rails and stands the same and so on to the top rail. When you are standing on your rails the next guy above you has his feet about even with your shoulder. In bigger barns there are several rows of rails like this across the width and go the full length of the barn. In the older barns the rails were made of strong oak and wide enough for your whole foot. The newer barns the rails are 2X4 pine and not as strong.
Housing:
Now you have four guys standing on the rails one above each other. The tractor brings in the trailer we loaded in the field. The two guys on the trailer lift and pass a stick full of heavy wet tobacco up to the guy on the bottom rail. Since there are three guys above him he passes the stick up to the guy above him he in turn passes it up to the guy above him who passes it up to the guy on the top rail. He hangs the stick on the rails in front of him and spreads the tobacco out evenly on the stick. So the bottom rail guy passes up three sticks but he has the rail at his shoulder and the one he is standing on. So he hangs two sticks. The guy above him passes two and hangs one. The guy on the third rail passes one and hangs one. The bottom rail guy runs the show and handles the most sticks. The guy on the top rail handles the fewest sticks. You move backwards as you hang the sticks.
Novice guys are broken in on the top rail. As they get more adept they move down the rails. But rarely do they get to do the bottom rail as that is the place where decisions have to be made and he runs things.
Kevin, me and Twig were at the bottom rails with in two weeks. We told Jack we were smart. Victor was smart enough but he wasn't healthy enough for the work on the bottom.
A few weeks into the work I saw a guy in town with his arm in a sling and his face mangled I ask Jack's son what happen to him? He said the guy fell out of the top rail of a barn. Really on those scaffolding rails there is really nothing but one by three sticks and air between you and the dirt floor or the trailer bed.