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Smith Mountain Tobacco Barns |
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01 February 2005 |
Structures Linger as Testament to Leafy Legend
We newcomers to the lake counties have few points of reference for the area’s agricultural heritage. Yet we can’t help but notice the sturdy little rectangular structures that dot the roadsides surrounding Smith Mountain Lake. Many tobacco barns, once essential to the livelihood of most farming families in Franklin, Bedford and Pittsylvania counties, still stand as reminders of a time before computers and couch potatoes.
By Jerry Hale
“It was just plain hard work!,” recalls Hattie Blankenship as I press her for memories of her family’s farming years. “Folks said raisin’ ‘bacca’ takes 13 months a year. We had three sons and a daughter…all of them helped with the crop.”
Hattie ticked off the sequence of time-consuming steps: “Sowin’ seed in planting beds; strippin’ it; separatin’; tyin’ the leaves to sticks for dryin’ in the barn; then moving the bundles to a pit to soften before takin’ ‘em to market in Danville.”
Hattie still lives on the property along Burnt Chimney Road that she and her husband Paul acquired from his father when they moved out from Roanoke in 1941.
“We had electricity in town, but not out here,” she says. “But the war was on. Paul’s daddy wanted him farmin’ rather than fightin’.”
More recently, Hattie’s son John and his wife Peggy built their brick ranch a couple hundred yards farther back from the road. The family tobacco barn sits midway between them along the gravel driveway. It was dressed up for Halloween when I first saw it, thanks to Peggy who decorates it for each of the four seasons. Built from logs taken off the property 55 years ago, it’s still in good condition.
“It was built for a two-acre crop,” Hattie says. “Had a raisin’ and quiltin’ day, and all the neighbors came in. That’s how it was back then. Everyone helped everyone else.”
Agnes Brown talked tobacco barns with me from behind the counter of Brownie’s Auto Parts (Rt. 616 on the way to Scruggs Corner), which she operates with husband Glenwood. There was one on the Saunders farm where Agnes grew up “...until the Lake came in an’ scared folks to death. Changed everything.” Harvesting their 2.5 acres, she recalls, was a 5-day process.
“We skipped school and picked in the morning when the leaves were sopping with dew. Put ‘em on a sled that a horse pulled between the rows. Tobacco gum got all over everything …your clothes, your hands.”
At the barn, three or four-leaf bundles were tied with string and draped over three tiers of horizontal poles spanning widthwise. Someone stood on the low poles to put bundles over the higher ones. Two fireboxes made of creek stone and mud generated the heat to dry the leaves. For a week, the fires were tended constantly to maintain the right temperature inside the barn.
“One of us slept outside on a cot to keep the fires stoked through the night,” Agnes recalls.
Glenwood Brown remembers helping relocate barns when Rt. 616 was widened. Some are still used as equipment sheds, some are empty.
“Most of the ones made of wormy chestnut got torn down to become wood for the furniture factories,” he says.
I learned a bit more talking with Ray Delong and several of his cronies who drink coffee and swap stories most mornings at Westlake’s Duck In Market. It was the bright tobacco (grown in gray sandy soil) that was fire cured in 7-8 days, they told me. Dark tobacco (for cigar wrapping, best grown on red land) was usually air dried over a 2-3 month period. Hardwood from clearing the planting beds was the preferred fuel but in the 40s was gradually replaced by oil and propane.
Tobacco barns were single-purpose and only used in the fall. I asked both Hattie and Agnes if kids ever played there between harvests. Agnes said it best: “Those were hard work places. We stayed clear of them best as we could!”
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Last Updated ( 07 June 2007 )
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