this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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I'm curious, what makes a tobacco barn a death trap? Is it simply the flammability or is there something else?
(Btw I visited such barns in Cuba and it was the best smell I smelled in my life)
So the "sticks" that the tobacco goes on are like 5-6 feet long.
Each "bay" needs to be just wide enough for the stick to hang. When "up in a bay" you're standing on the same thing the sticks hang on, so doing the splits for hours on end while doing manual labor.
Depending on barn, usually at least one person needs to be up in a "bay". In my family barn we had one person on the ground, one standing on the second "bay" and then someone else a couple rows up above the floor. Like 2-3 real stories if we were talking a house. Because the "top" touched the less weight, that's where the kids started lol.
Sometimes your lucky and the bays are made of cut wood, often it's just a straight up fucking locust tree trunk, that's not even tied down so it rolls side to side a little
The length of a bay varies, but when there's not a lot on there, it moves/bounces. When you get far enough down the bay that it stops, it starts to sag and creak from the weight. Again, this whole time you're doing the splits 10-30 feet off the floor of the barn.
It's so hard to get down/up, you start taking water breaks in the top of the barn.
Where it's hot as fuck and the air is full of dirt and tobacco dust, but at least you can sit on a beam for two minutes after constantly doing the splits.
Hell of a workout, just not as easy as driving a harvester thru a tomatoe field.
Quick edit:
But it's not just scary. I saw an uncle have a "bay" break, and he fell maybe 20 feet with shit ton of tobacco and pointy sticks, and his leg went thru the floor of the barn, but he didn't fall all the way thru.
He was fine, but all that weight and all those pointing sticks, at any moment something can give from the weight, and consequences could be fatal.
Interesting, thanks.