Hard work handed down

Taylor Howard was coming home from work in December 2023 when he saw smoke pouring out of the largest tobacco barn on his family’s land. 

“I flew up the driveway through the field, laying on the horn,” Taylor said. His grandfather, Charles “Shorty” Howard, had plugged in a tractor heater to keep the battery warm, and it caught fire. Shorty, Taylor and Taylor’s father saved what equipment they could before the heat forced them out. “You just had to sit there and watch all of your stuff burn,” Taylor said. He still hates the sound of fire. “The popping and cracking? It’ll give me cold chills.”

Setbacks are a fact of farm life, but Taylor is undeterred. Four generations of Howards have lived there, now including Taylor’s three children: Tate, 6, named Charles Tate after Shorty, and twins Carden and Calloway, 4.

Hard work runs in the family. Shorty started cutting tobacco at 13, which earned him a 1949 Ford — put in his daddy’s name, of course. It’s no surprise to Janet Howard, Taylor’s grandmother, that Taylor followed in her husband’s footsteps. “It was in his blood,” she said. “He always wanted to do it.”

Taylor agreed. “It’s all I’ve ever done. If it were a lot easier to live, it’s all I ever would do.” Taylor also works as a full-time foreman for The Allen Company, a road construction, quarrying and paving company. The family focuses on tobacco, which they sell to Philip Morris, rather than livestock — a change from the old ways, but something that Taylor said he likes because “crops stay put.”

At age 2, Taylor crawled into Shorty’s lap and said, “Pappy, I ain’t coming up here no more because you smell like stinking cigarettes.” Shorty has since quit smoking and now only drinks water — he doesn’t even touch Ale-8, the local-to-Winchester soda that the family used to order by the case. Taylor still consumes plenty of Ale-8 and smokes about a pack of cigarettes per day. 

Taylor said tobacco farmers are a dwindling group, and he’s one of the youngest. The family has had to sell tracts of land over the decades. “You’ll make more money building houses on it than you will farming it,” Shorty said. “I hate it’s come to that.” Taylor hopes to expand his tobacco harvest in the future. 

The youngest Howards show every sign of carrying on the family’s work. Janet was mowing one day when Taylor stopped her to ask if Tate could get up on the mower. They tried it out, but Tate was too light to keep the seat down. Taylor laughed and said they could rig a weight for his son. “That’s how I used to do it.”