Curing Tobacco, Bluegrass Scenic Byway

Several weeks ago I made the short drive on my usual route through the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky on SR 1681 near Midway. As the road took me to U. S. 60 near Keeneland, I took a side road back to 1681 past Midway. Along the side road I passed a farm where the tobacco was curing in the barn.

I turned around and went back for a few photos before heading on home. Seeing tobacco curing in this barn took me back to my childhood when my parents and siblings would drive to the country, as we called it, near Springfield, Kentucky to help put up the tobacco on my father's Uncle Mile's farm. Uncle Lee is long gone, as is his children, but his farm still exists and I'm fairly certain one of his grandchildren still runs the farm today. Putting up tobacco was a tedious and arduous process and back breaking work. Luckily, I was too young to help, but I remember well my older siblings toiling in the hot barn in the heat of late summer putting up the tobacco with the sweat covering their tshirts and their moans and groans as hour after hour crept by.

My childhood memories of the many trips to the country to Uncle Lee's farm still linger in my mind. I conjure up memories of taking a bath down in the creek near the road, of creeping out to the outhouse in the dark of night scared to death of every noise, sitting at the large kitchen table in the farmhouse kitchen eating fresh vegetables brought in from the garden. These are only a few of the many memories that seem to go on endlessly in the back of my mind. I wished I could go back there to any one of those trips with my parents and siblings and relatives present, if only for ten minutes, just to soak up a few more memories. ENJOY!