C & C Farm

C & C Farm raise tobacco, soybeans, and small grains. C & C Farms plants more than 300 acres of tobacco each year.
The tobacco is all flue cured and put in box barns. They grow their tobacco plants in a greenhouse. The flue cured tobacco has a higher sugar content than Burley tobacco. The farm has a leaf loader that loads the leaves into the racks for the box barns so the tobacco is never touched by hand. The tumbler spins the sand and dirt out of the tobacco after it has cured but before it is baled. Each bale weights about 850 lbs. The tobacco goes through stages when curing. It first goes through yellowing (the first 2-3 days), then the leaves are dried, then the stems are dried (the temperature has to be increased to dry the stems). The barns have computerized monitors that upload information to an app which is sent to a smart phone but the barns still have to be manually checked. There are 32 small barns and 10 large barns. If they were hand harvesting would require 24-32 people just to harvest the tobacco. With all of the equipment they only have 3-4 full time employees and 7-8 H2A (guest workers). They have several multi-pass harvesters which knock the leaves off as the stalk passes through the leaf catchers.

 The Grambler strips any remaining leaves off of the plant, there is a stalk thrower on the back and it discs and cuts the stalks. Thin leaves require about 6 days to dry where body leave take 9-10 days. They use 8-16-24 and 6-12-18 fertilizer with no potassium source from chlorine. They have a four row carousel transplanter as well as a tillivator to shape the rows.

 I found this farm very informative for my personal needs. I gained information that I can take back home to help on the farm. The extension agents work very closely with the farmer which shows me what I would be doing if I went into this type of career.