Chapter 3: OUTSTANDING

Progress is not defined as running in place. I’m still where I was at the beginning of my tale, and claiming any progress would be downright lying, but my prospects are improving, I think.

School is out for the summer. Maybe that’s a summer vacation for teachers and townie kids, but for farm kids, its time to begin work in earnest.

Our tobacco crop is our annual mainstay income, and the summer months are when it needs the most attention. Cultivation is labor intensive.

Sometimes some people misuse cultivation as a catchall phrase for all of a growers tasks involved in raising a crop. It’s in fact, a very specific task.

Soil gets wet with dew and rain and then bakes in the sun, making a hard brittle crust on the surface. Cultivating breaks up this crust, so roots can penetrate easily and rain, insecticides, and herbicide sprays can disperse in the ground near where the plants are erupting.

It must be done with great care, not to damage the young plants. Cuts in tobacco roots are open wounds for disease to invade through.

To understand the science of farming, you need to understand the life-cycles of the plants you are tending, and their specific enemies at various vulnerable stages.

Starting February first, Styrofoam trays with hundreds of pockets each, are floated in precise ph chemical water baths. Special soil mixture and a single tiny, almost too small to see tobacco seed is placed by hand in each pocket.

The covered float beds containing the seedlings must be protected from frost, too much sun or heat, birds, insects, and particularly ants.

Around Easter or just before, the seedlings are set out in freshly manured and tilled rows in the fields. After passing the danger of transplant shock, they are mowed to a uniform height and cultivated to remove the trimmings.

The plants are constantly monitored for fungus, diseases, insect invasions, and protected from their own exuberance. When blooms begin to appear, they need to be pinched off by hand. Budding plants need to be topped to prevent all the plant’s energy being directed into making seeds.

Once topped, the tobacco plants exhibit growth of secondary stems from the base known as suckers. These extra volunteer shoots, or suckers, rob the main plant reducing yield and quality, if not removed. Suckering tobacco means the task of removing these.

All this vigilance requires never ending inspections of every individual plant. Twenty five acres of tobacco is a lot of individuals.

School vacation time, is spraying time against weeds and insects. Cultivating reoccurs all summer long thereafter. Summer vacation?

When the lowest leaves begin turning yellow, they are harvested and cured separate from the main harvest, because they’re a lower grade. Several lower leaf positioned harvests may be necessary, to allow the upper most leaves to become richer, more expensive, higher grades of tobacco.

Finally the total harvest is completed and the tobacco is hung in heated curing barns. Temperature and humidity controls are critical. More labor intensive care and supervision.

Dry transportation to the auction barns is weather sensitive. Auctions are where your crop competes in quality with the other grower’s crops. If your yield is greater than expected, you may have more tobacco than you can legally sell according to your allotment. It’s difficult to decide whether or not to sell the excess to another grower. Someone who doesn’t have enough crop to reach his quota will buy only if you offer a substantial discount and he can profit from it. This must be weighed against competing for best price against your own identical product in another’s hands, at the auctions.

Holding unsold tobacco over till the next season, risks storage problems. Such as space, humidity control, infestations of mice and insects, and rot.

The ultimate option is to destroy the excess. Heartbreaking after all the effort invested.

Impressed? This is one crop.

Farmers usually grow a variety of crops over the seasons in a year, and each has it’s own science and life cycles. Animal husbandry requires a lot of specialized knowledge too. Let’s not mention government, business, and environmental regulations.

Stupid hicks? They’re outstanding in their fields. You can laugh.

After all this erudition, we’re overdue for something lighthearted or down and dirty. How about wieners?

Dad decided to butcher a young hog. Normally we do it ourselves but once a year we splurge on having the slaughter house do it.

The reason behind paying the slaughter house, is because we want sausage made from the entire hog and we don’t have the equipment, spices, recipes, or time to make it worthwhile as do-it-yourself.

We have it processed for a few cents a pound, into spicy ground breakfast sausage, stuffed sausages in Polish kielbasa style, various German styles Dad’s family liked and he grew up with, and cased sausages made with our unique family recipe for smoking in our own smoke house. This year, I pleaded for some hot dog wieners.

Dad agreed, if I paid the process cost, and didn’t try to go whole hog on wieners. I agreed, if he’d go halvers with me on the bull lips.

Are you smiling? Bull’s lips?

Great crab bait. This was the real reason for having the slaughter house butcher a hog at this time of year. Dad was running low on bait for his pots, and he would be offered the bull lips at a discount, if he paid the slaughter house to process the hog. A package deal.

That’s what I was negotiating with my father. A package deal. Wieners and some share in the bull lips, in exchange for some of my hoarded money.

Dad agreed, but not halvers. Fifteen percent for me.

I countered twenty percent should come to me. We compromised.

We bought a fifty five gallon drum of bull lips, and I got two five gallon bucket fulls, off the top. Ten of fifty would be twenty percent. Ten out of fifty five is a hair over eighteen percent, but easy to measure out in buckets. Dad charged me six bucks, almost a third the cost of the bull lips. Dad reminded me, don’t forget the wieners at my cost. I didn’t get near enough wieners to make it balance.

I couldn’t swing a whole drum of bull lips myself, so I’m satisfied.

What in hell are bull lips, and why did we want them? They really aren’t bull lips, most of them. They’re mostly lips from slaughtered cows, then steers is the next largest bunch, with a few bulls trailing.