ARCADIA | The Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, this is going to be a decent year for Mike Hege's tobacco.
"If we get a little more water, we're going to have a pretty fair crop," Hege said, tugging easily on a tobacco leaf as he spoke.
Troy Coggins, director of the Davidson County branch of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service, the man to whom Hege was speaking, nodded.
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"Oh, yeah," Coggins said. "You've got a good-looking crop. Lots of people would trade with you, I tell you that."
Hege, 66, has been tending tobacco on his family homeplace virtually his entire life. He left the farm in the mid-1960s and took a job at McLean Trucking Co. in Winston-Salem but returned to farming less than two months later.
"I tell people I worked public work six weeks," Hege said, chuckling as he recalled his short stint in the trucking business. "I've farmed all my life. It's the only thing I know."
This year he's farming 18 acres of tobacco - 12 acres across from his house off Joe Hege Road and six more acres not far away on land that belongs to his uncle.
Hege said that with the exception of 2008 when heart ailments forced him to take a year off, there's been tobacco raised on the farm for better than 100 years.
Joe Hege Road - off Muddy Creek Road - is named for Hege's grandfather. Hege's father was Joe L. Hege Jr.
They, too, were tobacco farmers.
Hege pointed to a lone tree that stands in a field across from his house. The tree is surrounded by tobacco plants.
"That's more of a landmark than anything," Hege said of the tree. "My great-great-granddaddy's house stood there. That's the main reason we haven't cut it. It helps us remember the spot."
Hege is like a lot of Davidson County tobacco growers, a man who loves his job despite the headaches it brings. Tobacco growers have to deal with all the problems Mother Nature throws at them, oft-times fickle buyers and a constant struggle to find someone to help at harvest.
But most say they wouldn't have it any other way.
Hege, the former president of the Davidson-Davie Tobacco Growers Association and former chief of the Arcadia Fire Department, raises a little corn, soybeans and hay, and a few beef cattle. Still, for the most part, his livelihood depends on tobacco.
He and his wife, Becky, raised two children from the money they made from the crop. Neil, their son, is a firefighter in Clemmons who helps his father with tobacco. Hege said he expects his son to continue raising tobacco - at least on a part-time basis - after he's dead and gone. The couple's daughter, Marcia Essick, is a speech pathologist with the Davidson County Schools.
Hege has hinted that this might be his final year as a full-time tobacco grower, that he might scale back his workload when the last of this year's crop is in the barns.
Coggins said he doesn't believe it. It's a threat he's heard, he said, numerous farmers utter over the years. Usually, Coggins said, they're back in the fields the following spring.
"There's just something about it," Coggins said of the lure of tobacco farming. "People ask, 'Why do you do it?' Oh, I don't know. Why do some people go play golf?"
Hege and a few of his workers were supposed to do their first priming Friday. As anyone who has done the job can attest, the initial priming is back-breaking work, dirty and hard. The harvesting of tobacco stretches for months, the last leaves not picked until mid-October, just beating fall's first frost.
Hege sells his tobacco to Philip-Morris International, the same company he's contracted with for eight years, since two years before the government lifted quota restrictions.
Hege said that going back to the days of tobacco auctions when growers were never sure the amount they'd net, farmers are still somewhat up in the air as to profit they'll make from their yields. Though Hege has a contract to produce 50,000 pounds of tobacco for Philip-Morris, the price fluctuates based on how the crop is graded.
"There's nine or 10 prices they can put on it," Hege said of what buyers pay. "You hope for top grade, but you're still disappointed a lot."
Coggins, who joined the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service in 1989 as a college intern, visits Hege and Davidson County's other tobacco growers as often as he can. He noted that not too many years ago, there were 100 or more tobacco farmers in the county. Only about 30 survive.
The decline, Coggins said, comes from the difficulty that comes with raising the crop.
"Tobacco's been through a lot of changes," Coggins admitted.
He and Hege exchanged good-natured ribbing with one another throughout their visit. Then Hege paused to brag on Coggins when he thought the extension director was out of earshot.
"Troy treats us OK," he admitted.
Just before Coggins climbed into his Ford pickup to leave, Hege seemed on the verge of reneging on his threat to get out of the business when this year's crop is done. Hege allowed he might scale back a bit, but probably isn't ready to give up entirely on growing tobacco.
"I'm not going to quit until my toes are turned up," he said. "I'm just an old tobacco farmer." Enditem
