Just walking by the side of the road. Fields and fields of tobacco, like an ocean. It's an amazing world.
Walking by this warehouse smelled like heaven. I walked through Wilson and Greene Counties last week, and I want you to know that Wilson and Greene Counties are the sweetest-smelling county in North Carolina.
I started in Wilson proper. I had spent the night at a little motel and was headed out of town on one of the roads south. Walking along a warehouse, I smelled something so delightful, so delicious I wished there were an Instagram for smells. It was, of course, a tobacco warehouse. Out front was parked a truck full of cured tobacco -- harvested, cured, and baled. I chatted with the two gentlemen out front for a while and asked if I could go in and take a picture. They preferred that I did not -- nothing they were ashamed of, but these are days when people in the tobacco business very strongly prefer to have as little attention as possible.
But as I walked the two-lanes between tiny towns like Speights Bridge and Lizzie and Scuffleton, the tobacco harvest was my constant companion, as was the overwhelming smell. It's everywhere. I also saw harvests of sweet potatoes and seed corn, so the week has been an orgy of pre autumnal bounty, to say nothing of big machines doing cool stuff.
But tobacco is the star of the show. I've been watching the fields ripen since I entered tobacco country in the eastern Piedmont, and the green leaves have begun going gold, one field at a time.
I started in Wilson proper. I had spent the night at a little motel and was headed out of town on one of the roads south. Walking along a warehouse, I smelled something so delightful, so delicious I wished there were an Instagram for smells. It was, of course, a tobacco warehouse. Out front was parked a truck full of cured tobacco -- harvested, cured, and baled. I chatted with the two gentlemen out front for a while and asked if I could go in and take a picture. They preferred that I did not -- nothing they were ashamed of, but these are days when people in the tobacco business very strongly prefer to have as little attention as possible.
But as I walked the two-lanes between tiny towns like Speights Bridge and Lizzie and Scuffleton, the tobacco harvest was my constant companion, as was the overwhelming smell. It's everywhere. I also saw harvests of sweet potatoes and seed corn, so the week has been an orgy of pre autumnal bounty, to say nothing of big machines doing cool stuff.
But tobacco is the star of the show. I've been watching the fields ripen since I entered tobacco country in the eastern Piedmont, and the green leaves have begun going gold, one field at a time.
 When the leaves turn gold, here come the big trucks. I first started seeing various harvesters riding the sandy fields. At the side of the roads I'd see big pale yellow-green leaves, like something from a giant |  A tobacco field is a thing of beauty. |
overwatered cabbage. Then I'd see the harvesters disgorging their loads onto the backs of repurposed school buses -- already mostly just a flatbed with a light body, so they work perfectly. Then the buses drop the leaves at the modern equivalent of the old tobacco barns we all love.
Family members no longer tend to tie the leaves to hang on rods and cure (my friend Cynthia Collins told me about wearing bandannas while doing this because her hands would get sticky from the resin and she didn't want to get it in her hair). These days farm workers -- mostly the immigrants busting their butts to feed their families that certain politicians seem to hate so much -- use a kind of fork arrangement that skewers a pile of leaves and holds them in the metal shed to cure. The fans pumping air through the sheds means the area around them smells beautiful.
After curing is done new trucks take the bales to warehouses -- most tobacco is produced directly for companies now, I'm told, so tobacco auctions are becoming rarer. The video below was made with shots I took in the past few days simply as I walked down the road in Lawson's footsteps. This is just what's going on now.
After curing is done new trucks take the bales to warehouses -- most tobacco is produced directly for companies now, I'm told, so tobacco auctions are becoming rarer. The video below was made with shots I took in the past few days simply as I walked down the road in Lawson's footsteps. This is just what's going on now.
Now as I walk I see little twists of cured tobacco lying by the side of the road as well, and they smell wonderful too. I have videos of sweet potato harvest by big noisy machines and of seed corn harvest by big noisy machines too. How jealous are you?
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