I quit smoking forty years ago, and am sorry that I ever started. My wife's family raised tobacco and it fed them and put her through college. I have helped pull it and house it, but am really happy that I no longer have to do that. My people were in sawmills and orchards, which I consider a much more honorable calling. My house is built on an old plantbed, and we sold our tobacco acreage years ago. The allotment system that the government used to control the number of farmers in the market is gone. The auction system that was used to sell flue-cured tobacco is gone. The farmers now contract directly with the companies, and no one knows what price someone else is getting. The auction system was totally open, and all one had to do was take a look at the grade card on the pile of tobacco and the weight and know who much a man got for his tobacco, and what quality tobacco he made. It used to be that everyone in my community had a tobacco crop, but now only about four men in the community raise any, and most of them are getting out.
As for growing your own, tobacco is grown in Canada and in Germany. I was shocked to look out the window of a bus in Germany and see fields of tobacco. It has the smallest seed of any plant, so small that it is mixed with sand to plant it. The plant grows the most of any agricultural plant and matures in 90 days. I can't think of any area in the US, outside of the high Rockies and Mount Washington in New Hampshire, where it could not be grown. Curing it is another matter. Burley is air-cured, and dark tobacco is cured over a smoldering fire. The Turks cure Latakia by laying it up on the roof and letting it dry that way. Making bright leaf would be a real trick on the home level. When bulk barns came in, we had to fight a bunch of fires in them and they were nasty.
