I like the Ole Bird, but I am fain to ask - what are tobacco sticks?
Thanks for posting the pic - I like it.
Al
Al, This will explain what tobacco sticks are:
Back in the olden days, when smoking tobacco was fashionable, lots of it was produced here in Tennessee, but now that there isn't much demand for it, tobacco farmers are going out of business and many of the old tobacco barns stand empty and derelict.
Many of the barns contain thousands of tobacco sticks which have laid there for many years.
Tobacco sticks were made on the farm , by hand by splitting local logs into sticks, each about 50 or 55 inches long and about 1.5 inches square. Some were pointed on one or both ends. At tobacco harvest time, the sticks were hauled to the fields and stuck in the ground along the rows of tobacco. As the leaves were harvested, they were hung or impaled or tied onto the sticks and when the sticks were full of leaves, they were hauled to the barn and hung on racks for drying.
The sticks were all produced from locally grown trees such as Yellow Poplar, Oak, Maple,Hickory, Chestnut, etc.
I buy up these old sticks from the families of the farmers, who are very happy to sell them, and run them through my planer to clean them up.
In their raw state, they look like any other old, dirty stick of wood but after they are cleaned up, they are actually quite beautiful. I use them to make hiking staffs, tables and now, frames
http://oldcrowtobaccosticks.webs.com/Don R
