When I was 17 or 18, way back in 1977 or 1978, I met a guy from Kentucky. His name was Ray. I ended up going with him to Kentucky and spending a few months on his family’s tobacco farm where I helped in the fields cutting and hanging tobacco.

Now I guess I have to describe what cutting and hanging tobacco is like for you city slickers. It is the hardest work you can do for 5 bucks an hour, but it is sort of interesting.

First, you have to wake up before sunrise and eat a breakfast of eggs, bacon, ham, biscuits and gravy, and other fattening, artery clogging food to keep you going.

Then you spend all day in a hot, steamy field full of really big plants. Tobacco plants, at least the ones in Kentucky, are about eight feet tall and have huge broad leaves covered with huge scary insects. The stalks are very thick and fibrous. The plants, especially when wet with dew or other moisture, weigh about 5 to 7 pounds each. They are planted in neat rows, the plants about a foot and a half apart, the rows about three feet apart. Before you begin someone goes down each row and in between the rows  they take thick, square wooden stakes about five feet long and stick them into the ground. These stakes are placed beside every 6th plant.

Here is what you need for the cutting part. One tobacco knife… which is a sharp blade with a handle about two feet long…

The blades, which I am showing above thanks to Google images, come in different shapes. Some people like a square blade, other’s like a more rounded shape. The other thing you need is a metal point, like a little dunce cap only more squarish…

That is one of the points set on one of the wooden stakes.

And there is a picture of both a cutting knife and two types of the spear points.

Remember the stakes are stuck in the ground every 6th plant or so. So what you do is, you walk up to the first stake and put the cap on the top end so you have a sharp spear sticking straight up into the air. Then you go back to the first plant, grasping the handle of the cutter in whichever hand is your strong hand. With the other hand you grab the stalk of the plant in the middle… height wise… then you swing the blade at the base of the stalk, trying not to cut your own foot off. After a little practice, you can sever the stalk with one good swing.

Then, using your weak hand, you swing the plant up parallel to the ground and try to aim it so that the point of the tip on the stake goes through the center of the fibrous stalk as you swing it down… did you get that? You have to try to impale the stalk of the plant on the spear in one big sweeping motion, while not driving the point through your own hand or forearm. And it needs to hit the middle of the stalk. This takes a while to master. If you can’t get a mental image of what I am describing, Google it.

Then you do the same with five more plants. You have to get a rhythm. You grab the plant, swing the blade, then swing the plant up and back down to impale it. Then you take a half step forward, grab another plant and repeat. And you do this all day in the sun and humidity. Every time you have six or so plants stuck sideways on a stake, you take the cap off the stake and move it to the next stake, and then repeat that over and over again.

That is a picture of some farmer showing city kids how easy it is to stick one plant on one stake one time with two hands. Lifting heavy plants one-handed all day, and swinging them and spearing them does some nasty stuff to your wrists. And if you miss the stalk with the stake, or get too close to the edge of the stalk, you need to take the point off, take the plant off, and then try again.

I never got as fast as the locals, but I got good enough so that they respected me for keeping at it all day. When you have finished a full stake, it looks like this…

Except the stakes are still stuck in the ground and there are thousands of these stakes filling the huge fields. But that isn’t all. Oh no it isn’t. Because then you have to do the hanging part. So join me for part two where I will explain how much fun that is.