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Adair Co. KY burley fields: Staggered plantings, nowadays 2017-06-11 - Taylor Ford Road, Adair County, KY - Photo by Linda Waggener, ColumbiaMagazine.com photo(c). This field's planting appears to be staggered just a few days for the other, so that harvest time will come shortly after its more mature companion field is 'housed.' So much about today's burley crop has changed since government controls no longer have acreage or poundage controls. From an efficiency standpoint, the new system is better in almost all respects. 'Work which should not be did is not done now'. Scarcely anyone remembers burning beds, drawing plants, pegging, being top tier man in the barn - or the celebration time which accompanied going to the market - many chose a 'wet' county to sell - and the euphoria which came when the family's one big check of the year came weeks before Christmas. Nor the character building side (recalling the late Dr. Steve Aaron's number one Sermon on the Wall: Suffering builds character) for kids who endured relative brief times of periodic drudge labor in the fields. There was a social side to the family farm crops, at every phase, which is not so prevalent nowadays, too. Do old timers miss it. And, while todays massive fields retain the plant's inherent beauty, it's not quite the same as the pampered, part-of-the-landscape beauty of the small patches of the 1950's, or is it? - EW. Paired photo Permalink | Comments?

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