This interesting article appeared in The Crittenden Press
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This article appeared in the Crittenden Press August 13, 1981. It is a great piece of history as it was told by told by people that actually remember the hemp growing period in our past.
No one seemed to think much about some of the stranger qualities of their crop when they grew marijuana legally in Crittenden County during World War II.
Thomas S. Croft, 55, of Rt. 9, Marion, can remember waking up with puffy eyes and a stuffy nose the day after he worked in his father's hemp fields near Tolu.
It had a gummy feeling to it, Croft said, rubbing his fingers together at the memory. Handling hemp was like touching the sap of a cedar Christmas tree, he said. "
You could stand on a hill, and the bottoms smelled like they were full of skunks," Mrs. Roe Williams, remembered. Her husband, along with most of his neighbors in the Cave-In-Rock area grew hemp for the government in 1942-43 to produce a seed supply. Seeds were then grown elsewhere to produce the fiber needed for rope and other uses.
At the time it was being grown, we had just lost Manila in the war, farmers in the area considered it their patriotic duty to grow the plants for the "strong cordage" needed by the Navy and for packing between a ship's hulls. Hemp had a tendency for plugging holes. Its the only crop that was known to be grown for the government on contract, so it must have been a pretty crucial thing.
We didn't even think about the value of it, Mrs. Williams said, when she was reminded of he plat's worth on the drug market today. We thought we were being patriotic. When you said marijuana to us, we didn't know what you were talking about.
Not just anyone could grow the hemp, Mrs. Williams said. The federal government inspected the character of the grower before he obtained the seed. It was considered a narcotic even then, although most people probably weren't aware of it. We knew it was something they didn't want you to have around. When they traveled to Lexington to obtain the seed allotment, the government had a supply piled in the center of a tobacco warehouse, surrounded by guards. They considered it a very crucial item.
The county extension agent held meetings to teach farmers how to tend their new crop. Growing hemp was a primitive process, even by 1940 standards. The stalk was too long to go through a combine, so all the work had to be done by hand. The growing season was similar to that of corn. At harvest time the plants could have grown to be 12 feet tall with stalks as thick as a man's arm.
They were sown in 42-inch rows, three to six feet apart. After the male plants pollinated the females, they died and had to be cut out by hand. During the harvest, the plants were cut off close to the ground with corn knives and were dried in shocks for two to four weeks. Then the shocks were placed on a canvas sheet and beaten with sticks a little longer than broomsticks until the seeds fell from beneath the leaves where they clustered. The plants seemed to do especially well on rich, river bottom soil.
Farmers took the seed to a Sturgis milling company for cleaning and selling back to the government; which gave them to farmers up north to be grown for the hemp fiber.
Many acres of the hemp fell victim to river flooding. Most farmers made a better return on their crop the second year they tried it , but some got kind of disgusted and just quit. It wasn't that good a cash crop. The farmers were paid about $10.00 a bushel for the seed. Birds like to eat the seed, and the hemp had a "lot of competition" from giant ragweed, which looked a lot like marijuana and grew nearly as tall, Croft said.
Back then, we didn't have any chemicals. We had the hoe. Come a rainy season, those horse weeds really did like to get up and go.
By 1944 the farmers who were finally getting the hang of growing hemp were out of luck. There wasn't any market for it, Nylon, which was cheaper and easier to produce, took its place.
