Shade Tree Orchard
Tobacco has been grown in Tennessee since Indigenous peoples cultivated the soil here. However, Dark Fired Tobacco is only grown in 4 Tennessee Counties and 20 counties in Kentucky. This area is known as The Black Patch. Tobacco was, and remains, labor intensive work with little modernization. Today, tobacco is started in green houses in February and March and Once mature enough and the weather is warm enough, the small plants are planted by hand in each row on the back of a machine called a Setter. The weeds between plants will be hoed by hand while flowering off shoots called “suckers” will be trimmed by field hands through the growing process. Once matured, workers will hand cut each of the plants with a Tobacco Knife, careful to not damage the delicate leaves. After the plants have wilted in the sun they make their way to barns like the ones across the street from you. Each plant is hung from the top rafters of the barns to just below average height. Layers of Sawdust and wood slabs are laid on the floor of the barn til they are about 24” high. Little holes are made in the sawdust where small fires will be started. The goal is to create smoke and heat not flame. A flame will get the tobacco too hot and risk burning the barn down, losing all of the crops. Too little heat can cause the tobacco to mold and not cure properly. Today, your tobacco crop size and price is determined by your contract with the tobacco company. However, during Felix Ewing’s time, it was based on auctions and what a company was willing to pay at the end of the season. Again, tobacco farming hasn’t changed much since the early 1900s. We have basically replaced the mules with a tractor. You can imagine that when the owner of the American Tobacco Company, James B Duke, slashed prices paid to these hard working tobacco farmers to below the cost of production, tensions began to rise. The Black Patch was about to see just how far a man would go to feed his family.