BY MILES AND NICOLE LAYTON

Day trip – a tour of Bertie County and a look back at tobacco farming…

A gallery of photos appear at the end of this story.

Because Raleigh treats rural areas and Eastern NC poorly or ignores us completely, time has ravaged our region in sharp contrast to the urban and suburban parts of the state.  This statement may trigger some folks, but I wish the eastern part of the state on the other side of I-95 could secede from the Piedmont region that dominates the state. That way, we could better govern our own versus waiting for the table scraps that come from a Raleigh that’s governed by special interests and big city lawmakers who have little concept and maybe even a bit of contempt of rural life.

Photos show Aulander, a town of about 700 people in the northwestern corner of the county that’s close to the border of Hertford County. 

Located at the crossroads of Routes 305 and 11, Aulander was once a vibrant place to live. 

  

However, Aulander’s Downtown Main Street district has a lot of deserted buildings that perhaps tell a story about the town’s past. There is an abandoned drugstore in the center of town that once had a soda counter, which was probably very popular at one time. An old copier sat in the corner of the pharmacy close to a shelf that held greeting cards that never got sent.  

We saw what appeared to be an appliance or television repair shop. In the store’s front window, you can see one of those old wooden/furniture-style television sets that everyone once had.  

Since I am a newspaper guy, I found this part about the town’s past interesting — “The Aulander Advance,” a weekly newspaper began being printed in 1922. Mr. A.G.L. Stephenson was the editor, and his son John was the business manager. This paper merged with the Windsor Ledger in 1926 and became the Bertie Ledger-Advance.

I don’t suspect the local media travels to Aulander much anymore, but we’ll touch base from time to time, particularly because it is a pretty drive with many fields filled with crops along the way. And I can be reached at mileslayton1969@gmail.com

Speaking of crops – it’s around harvest season for many crops, including tobacco. North Carolina leads the nation in flue-cured tobacco production, a variety prized for cigarette manufacturing. While the crop no longer dominates the state’s farm economy as it once did, tobacco still provides significant income for many rural counties, particularly in the east. Farmers face challenges with labor shortages, fluctuating demand, and weather conditions that can affect leaf quality. Despite these pressures, the harvest continues to mark a traditional season in North Carolina’s farming calendar.

Crews move quickly through fields, pulling the mature golden leaves by hand or with mechanical harvesters before loading them onto trailers. 

Worth noting, tobacco is a sticky plant that can stick to workers’ skin and clothing during harvesting, causing irritation and even stinging their eyes when combined with sweat. Picking the leaves can even make you slightly nauseous, maybe as if you accidentally swallowed a small bit of Skoal when driving over some railroad tracks on the way home.

That and black snakes tend to nap in the shadows cast by the enormous leaves – so there’s that.  

Once cut, the tobacco leaves are taken to curing barns, where controlled heat and ventilation slowly dry them, transforming the crop’s color and locking in quality. Very hot – and if you see a certain style of shortish wooden barn, you’ll know these were places where the leaves were once dried out, cured.  

Once upon a time, when tobacco was king in the Tarheel state, especially Eastern NC, where raising this crop was a way of life, harvest time was followed by selling the tobacco in large warehouses in places like Greenville and Wilson.

For many, many years, everyone gathered for these events with auctioneers shouting and buyers and sellers making deals in warehouses that were quite hot in the days before air conditioning. State politicians often made the rounds when the markets were in full swing.

So I’ll say again, whether it’s tobacco, cotton, or corn, please offer a prayer to our farmers.  

Next stop was Roxobel and Kelford – not much there, mainly a few abandoned brick buildings, but probably prominent places in their day that catered to the farming community. I wish we could go back in time to see when these small towns were strong farming centers. 

Roxobel is a wide spot along Route 308 in the northwestern end of the county. Town of about 200 people dates to 1724 and was originally known as Cotten’s Cross Roads. After several name changes, it has remained Roxobel since 1849. Roxobel’s neighbor – Kelford – is pretty similar. On that note, Lewiston-Woodville, a town of about 500 people is more or less home to the big Perdue Farms’ processing plant. I passed a sign by the plant that said the company was offering jobs paying a starting hourly wage of $21.50 an hour – nice. Applying the math, $21.50 times 40 hours times 52 weeks equals $44,720 a year – that’s more than a first-second-third-fourth year teacher with a college degree is paid; Starting salary for a teacher – $41,000. 

Back to travel time – Bertie County has a lot of wide open spaces, white two-story farmhouses, green fields and nice people. If you haven’t already embraced the people, places and culture of Eastern NC, make take a trip up Route 305.