Tobacco Fields & Motherhood

In each community there are micro cultures that aren’t necessarily geographically distant from each other. In an urban setting, one city street can be the difference between a sought out exclusive community and one that is fearsome after dark.

In our more agricultural community, less than a mile separates the manual harvesting of tobacco and the public school system. Right down the street from the kids’ school are tobacco fields. They were being harvested as I drove by to pick up the girls.

Tobacco is an important agriculture crop here in Southern Maryland. Years ago, it was a golden crop, the commodity that was the wealth builder. There are odes to its history with community and street names like Lower Marlboro Road and the city of Upper Marlboro. There was a big tobacco buyout in 2005 and many farms apparently took it voluntarily. There are still some tobacco being grown but many fields that used to grow tobacco now look like wheat fields.

The terms of the buyout is such that the farmer must keep their fields agricultural for ten years. I don’t know what our community will look like after that. Hopefully there won’t be a 7-Eleven on every street corner.

It’s an election year so we’ll see how the community as a whole feels about that.

I stopped and trekked across the field to the workers and asked if I could photograph them. They were really friendly and very willing.

They welcomed all my questions.

“How long have you been doing this?” Most of them have been harvesting tobacco like this all of their lives.

“Do you do this every year?” Yes ma’am, every year.

One worker held up one of the sticks that were used to dry the leaves. They asked me, “Do you know what this is?”

I said, “A stick?”

“Yup, that’s right.” And no more explanation was forthcoming. I supposed I answered correctly.

I arrived just as they were finishing stacking the large tobacco leaves in big wigwam-type piles. They asked if I wanted to go with them to see some real action – cutting the leaves.

They showed me the home made machetes.

These were made long ago and sharpened manually each time.

At this point, the husband called and asked me what I wanted at the grocery store. I said, “You won’t guess where I am. I’m with the tobacco workers taking pictures.”

The husband said, “Are you alright?”

Up to the point, I hadn’t thought about it. I looked around and said, “Yes, of course I am.”

And I really was.

Here is Esther, the only woman in the group. I asked to take her photo and she said, “Oh no. No. No.” I lowered my camera and obliged her. We stood and spoke a long time about our kids. She had seven children. She bemoaned how hard it was to raise children now-a-days. How there are so many distractions and how kids don’t know the value of hard work anymore. She said men don’t know how to take care of their children, that the jails in Prince Frederick were filled with dead beat dads. I wanted to go home and rustle the boy off the couch immediately.

I asked her, “Are you sure I can’t take just a couple?”

She said, “Well alright.”

Before I left, she gave me a really big hug. It gave me a healthy new respect for the way they make their living.