At Mucci Farm near Frankfort, the owner and the laborers know the value of hard work.
The farm, founded by Thomas Richard “Dick” Mucci in 1988, is one of the remaining farms in Franklin County. There migrant workers, most of them from Mexico, strip leaves from the tobacco stalks and bundle them together for processing.
The workers move fast and wear gloves to protect their hands in the large and dusty barn, where sunlight trickles in through slats in the walls.
Dick, 65, says he started working labor jobs when he was 14 years old.
“My father told me that he wasn’t going to buy me new clothes, so I started working,” he says. Dick and his older brother worked with road crews for four summers. “I got my real education with a bunch of old men,” Dick says.
Dick graduated with his B.S in animal science from Morehead State University in 1972. He had trouble finding a job after graduating from college, so he got in touch with an old friend who gave him a job at a tobacco field. He eventually found work at South Central Bell and held various positions until his retirement in 2010. He bought his land in 1988 and worked the tobacco farm part-time.
“I’m the kind of guy that has to keep busy,” Dick says, explaining why he now also works as a crop adjuster. “You should always have several things going at once, because you don’t know when things are gonna blow up.”
The tobacco industry is declining in Kentucky and throughout the United States. Dick says it is sometimes difficult to find workers, so for his harvest this year he borrowed workers from a friend’s farm. He says he may not plant tobacco next year.
“He treats us well,” says Isael Cortes Ibarro, 20, of Oaxaca, Mexico, as he separated tobacco leaves.
