Annual gain: in the growth business that is a tobacco farm, the crop sets the calendar for most of the year.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS - Calendar

A tobacco farm is quiet in winter. The old crop is gone, and, for a while, a farmer's attention lags. Then New Year's triggers something. His thoughts stray to seed and soil, the new crop and ways to do it better. Snow might weigh on the greenhouses, but the longest season has begun.

About 7,800 Tar Heel tobacco growers raised $588 million of tobacco on 151,000 acres last year. Sam Cobb and his father, Bernard, were two of them. They moved to this 225-acre farm near Burlington when Sam, now 35, was two weeks old. He and his wife have six children: 14, 12, 10, 5 and twins who will turn 2 in December. This year, with help from two hired hands, the Cobbs raised 90 acres of tobacco.

In the greenhouse, black seeds--as tiny as grains of mustard--nestle in soil in plastic trays. By late April, seedlings are ready to transplant. Spring rains pepper them--if not, there's irrigation--and they take hold. So do weeds and grass that could strangle their roots. By mid-May, the air is humid. Hour after hour, the hired men hoe--chopping, farmers call it--grass and weeds.

By June, tobacco is waist-high. Suckers--unwanted shoots that stymie growth--begin to sprout and have to be broken off or sprayed. Hornworms, plump and green and as big as a farmer's finger, attack the plants. Farmers fight back with pesticides and chemicals, but tobacco remains North Carolina's most labor-intensive crop.

The August heat takes on a different character, dry and baking. At the end of the long rows, jar flies--cicada, to city folk--drone in the heat. Harvesting begins. In each of several passes a week or two apart--pullings or croppings, farmers call them--the Cobbs and their men strip the gradually ripening leaves from plants.

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After the green leaf is stuffed into propane-heated barns, the more experienced Bernard Cobb, 71, takes charge of...