HUNTINGTOWN -- Sitting in a Rube Goldberg-like contraption attached to the back of a tractor, Courtney Curlett picked up the tender, young tobacco plants and hand-fed them into a machine that dug holes in the soil below, watered the plants and set them in neat rows.
The teen-ager was getting a lesson from Bryan Wood, son of tobacco farmer Frank Wood, in how to place the plants in the machine. Helen Marcellas and Sammy Jones -- friends of the Wood family -- worked alongside them in the four-seat planter as it was pulled slowly up and down the dusty field.
Curlett and 17 other students, all 10th-graders at St. Paul's School and St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville, were learning about Maryland's tobacco industry as part of an in-depth study program. Their teacher was Frank Wood, whose family has planted the crop for more generations than he can remember in Huntingtown in Calvert County.
"I never imagined I'd be planting tobacco," said Curlett, 16, of Ruxton, after she stepped down from the planter.
The students spent two days in the classroom researching the history of the tobacco industry, the backbone of Southern Maryland's economy for more than 300 years, and the political, social and economic impact of the state's tobacco buyout program, which pays farmers not to grow the crop.
Then they spent part of a day in the fields, getting a glimpse of a way of life that many say will disappear soon.
Frank Wood, 67, invited the students to the 288-acre farm outside of Prince Frederick. The farm is owned by John Prouty; Wood leases 2 acres there for tobacco.
"There are a few of us still growing tobacco. ... But most of the tobacco farmers took the buyout," Wood said.
He said his reasons for not taking it were philosophical.
"I don't want to sign a contract that says I can't ever again participate in the growing or storing of tobacco because the buyout payment is only for 10 years," Wood said. "Tobacco is a good money crop, but my main reason for not taking the buyout is my freedom of choice. And my freedoms are not for sale."
He described how tobacco planting has changed over the centuries, from the back-breaking labor of digging holes one by one to using a labor-intensive hand-planter, then to using a modern planter that seats up to four people.
This year, he also enlisted the help of his son, Bryan, 39; Jones, 65, one of his neighbors in Huntingtown; and Marcellas, 82, of Lusby, an old friend who had never planted tobacco and wanted to try it.
Prouty, 79, gave the students a tour of the barn, built in 1939, where the tobacco is air-dried for 60 to 90 days after being harvested. The next year, it is taken to Upper Marlboro and sold at auction.
The visit to Prouty's farm was the students' second stop Tuesday. They spent the morning at the Maryland Cooperative Extension research and education center in Upper Marlboro, learning about the buyout program, alternative crops for tobacco growers and other possible uses for the tobacco plant. Joining the students were their history teachers, Tucker Fulwiler of the girls school and Kevin Cronin of the boys school.
David L. Conrad, the extension's regional tobacco specialist showed the students an experimental vineyard, an apple and peach orchard plot, a specialty herb project and a forestland project, all being explored as alternative crops for tobacco farmers.
"We are studying social history here," said Fulwiler. "It's a piece of Americana."
The students decided to study the state's tobacco industry as part of the May Plan, a program in which students spend 3 1/2 days immersed in one topic.
Jeanne Blakeslee, dean of students at the girls school, said the May Plan gives boys and girls at the schools a chance to work together: "It is a different way of learning. It is a way of connecting the students to the topic."