- [Narrator] Dillon County was formed in 1910
from Marion County.
While Dillon is one of the smallest counties
in the state, it brought in a lot of tobacco.
Tobacco is a labor-intensive crop that has
a long and complicated history.
- To start with what you had to do is get your bed fixed
to plant the seed, tobacco seed.
Okay whenever they come up, you had to go in there
and pick out the weeds and all that for the plants
to come on up.
You had a big old cloth sheet like thing
you had to spread over the top to keep your moles
and stuff from getting on it.
Go out there and get it in section, run the rows,
sow the fertilizer and rich it.
Once you got that done, you 'baco plants would be big enough
you'd had to go in he bed and pull them up.
Back then you didn't have no tractor.
You had a hand transplanter and somebody to drop plants
forward, do a load there and tote your water in that
transplaneter, they'd drop one plant in the planter
and you'd put in the dirt and turn it to get the plant
in the dirt.
Whenever it got time to plant the leaves would be ready
you had to go there and crop it and put in the 'baco barn.
Once you put it in the 'baco barn you'd cure it.
And you'd take it out and put it in your pack house.
- [Narrator] And after that you could sell it.
And in the 1920's that's exactly what they did.
Over 7800 acres produced over five million
pounds of tobacco.
That was then sold for $126 an acre.
- [Paul] Growing up most of us in our area on the farm
had tobacco allotments.
You had allotments and for those allotments you would
plant those acres.
Nowadays basically according to your allotment
and you could transfer it to other farms
and plant that acreage.
To start with everything was grown in tobacco beds.
Nowadays it's grown in green houses
in a controlled environment.
Stick barns as we called 'em are now box barns.
That they cure, they can put in five barns a day,
where we could put in only two.
Back then everything was done by hand,
where today most of the modern equipment such as planting
and tractors and things of this nature
are just so much more production oriented
then it was in our day.
- [Narrator] When the Pee Dee was in trouble
because cotton was failing tobacco saved them.
People rarely farm tobacco now because of the buy out
and so many other health related reasons.
For additional information be sure to look at
The Great Harvest in your local library.