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Read All About It: Let smoking barns smoke



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Read all about it
By: PETTUS L. READ, Tenn. Farm Bureau News
Posted: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 9:55 pm
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I love this time of the year when the trees across Tennessee allow their leaves to turn an array of colors that would cause an artist's paint palette to seem dull in contrast to what we see on our hillsides. To me, a Tennessee fall is about as stress relieving as a vacation to a tropical island is to someone who has to live in some big city like New York or Chicago. You will notice I said, "has to live," because I just can't imagine a person wanting to live there. Especially, if they have ever experienced a star filled fall night sky around an open fire in the month of October in rural Tennessee.

Fall has always been my time of the year since the early beginning of my life. Being born in the month of October adds to the specialness of this season for me and it seems I never had a birthday cake with any other color of icing than orange and black. My birth date is so close to Halloween I guess I was always considered a spook or a goblin and my family saw the opportunity to celebrate both events with one cake. We were sort of tight when it came too frivolous spending.

But another thing I enjoy about this time of the year are road trips to rural parts of Tennessee to catch the local harvest of crops among our farmers. To see corn pickers running through fields of golden corn stalks and combines picking soybeans leaving a path of open field as they go is really something to behold. It is what makes fall and should be enjoyed by everyone sometime in his or her life.

Another site of fall occurs up on the Tennessee and Kentucky state lines where dark fired tobacco is grown. Not only do you have a memory-producing site, but also a smell that once experienced will haunt your fall memories from now on. Dark fired tobacco is cured this time of the year in that area in barns that contain wood fires much like the old time smoke houses did in years past to cure meat for Tennessee families. The smoke from the fires using wood slabs colors the leaf of the tobacco and gives it that special flavor prized by those who still choose to smoke a premium tobacco. The smoke from the wood fires fill the barns and escapes through the planks of the barn structures into the cool fall air creating a scene and smell that only happens at this time of the year in areas that grow the crop. Many times the local fire departments are even called by unsuspecting visitors who are driving through the area thinking that the barns are on fire, but are quickly told that the barns are fine and this is a process that has occurred in the area for generations.

In the book Robertson County Tennessee, published by Turner Publishing Company and written by Yolanda G. Reid and Rick S. Gregory, a poem by Robert Penn Warren is used to explain the mood of this very special event. Entitled "Boyhood In Tobacco Country," Warren wrote:

All I can dream tonight is an autumn sunset

Red as a hayrick burning. The groves,

Not yet leafless are black against red, as though,

Leaf by leaf, they are hammered of bronze blackened

to timelessness, Far off from the curing barns of

tobacco, Blue smoke, in pale streaking, clings to the

world's dim, undefinable bulge."


But, even something as simple as farmers smoking their crops this time of the year in this area, is now in danger of being placed in jeopardy by those who see this as a danger to the public. It is being suggested that the smoke from those barns is hazardous and should be controlled by government. And limits should be placed on how close schools should be near these barns and the public should be protected from the dangers presented by smoking tobacco barns. Those who question this farming practice seem to think that the smoke released from the barns is something close to a form of giant cigarette smoke and in truth is nothing more than simple wood smoke that occurs from any form of wood fire.

In my opinion, there is enough government interference in what we all experience each day without this new attack on an old tradition, that each year is reduced annually on its own due to the industry's own demand needs. If these folks get their way to stop these barns from smoking, I guess that new grill you just bought will be next, along with the barbeque place down the road. No more smoked bacon, spareribs and who knows what will happen at the volunteer fire departments next hamburger supper.

Let's leave the smoking barns of Robertson County alone and preserve a tradition and enterprise that no one has complained about for hundreds of years, until now.

- Pettus L. Read is Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted by e-mail at pread@tfbf.com
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Member Opinions:
By: turfgrease on 10/8/09
No more smokin' spareribs?! Stop the maddness!


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