From the dust jacket:

A moving photo near the end of Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy shows a crew of workers, looking weary but satisfied, leaving the barn after another long day of harvesting tobacco. As Wendell Berry says in his essay, these Henry County, Kentucky, neighbors gathered together whenever any of them needed the help of others. This time-honored practice of swapping work was, Berry writes, "a good way to get wok done," and "a good way to live."

An insightful meditation on the shifting nature of humans' relationships with the land and with each other, Berry's essay laments the economic, political, and societal changes that have forever altered Kentucky's rich agricultural traditions. Berry also adds a deeply personal perspective to Hall's eloquent visual testimony. With a farm of his own nearby, Berry was a longtime friend and neighbor of the families shown in Hall's pictures and took part in their work swapping. In addition to detailing the repetitive, strenuous labor involved in harvesting a tobacco crop, he relates memories of stories told, laughs shared, meals savored, and refreshment well earned.

47 photographs by James Baker Hall. 78 pages.

Links:

Tobacco Harvest at University Press of Kentucky

A review of Tobacco Harvest in Chevy Chaser Magazine

An Early Times (bourbon) Tobacco Harvest advertisement from 1952

Green Tobacco Sickness in Tobacco Harvesters -- Kentucky, 1992