Rural Kentucky Flavor: Tobacco, Cattle, & More!

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Sources posted below. 

 

In 1993, Kentucky's primary crop was tobacco. Its secondary crops were beef & dairy. 

 

Knox County itself had three types of commodities in 1988: tobacco, beef, and dairy. By 1993 the dairy farmers had stopped exporting. Jefferson County itself was almost 100% tobacco by 1993, along with nearby counties. 

 

It would be nice if these tobacco & beef farmers were represented ingame instead of having corn everywhere. There are a few major advantages to doing this:

 

1) It increases difficulty. Tobacco is not exactly edible like corn is. 

 

2) Tobacco would not be easily converted into cigarettes. In Kentucky, most farmers cut & cured the tobacco themselves. They would harvest it, chop it into the valuable parts, hang it in a barn to dry, then take it all to an auction warehouse to be sold. 

 

3) Tobacco farming has its own tools. These tools are generally (besides the machete) not very useful for combat. 

 

4) Beef cattle could work well with the new animal system coming up. These cattle would may have some zombie problems and/or starve and/or freeze and/or become a tasty snack and/or use their fierce hooves & horns to maul a player since the whole Zombie Apocalypse thing may make cattle less friendly toward humanity....

 

5) Beef cattle do not produce much milk, making them less useful. Moreover, short of players having freezers set up or curing methods set up, a lot of their meat could go to waste. 

 

6) It would enable you to make very spooky barns. Whether they're dark slaughterhouses full of dead cattle from a zombie that snuck in before panicked cattle broke down the doors & ran, or hard to see rooms full of hanging tobacco leaves a zombie could be lurking in to ambush the player, there's lots of options!

 

It would also help with the players asking for tobacco seeds. Kentucky historically HAD lots and lots of these seeds. Farmers also grew corn, tomatoes, and cantaloupe but these were all less common. 

 

A farm co-op near Knox County, Cumberland Farm Products in Monticello KY, also was known for paying farmers well to produce cabbage, bell peppers, and tomatoes. This area was a tourist area too, with many Ohioans descending upon Lake Cumberland. Locally these out of states were known as the Ohio Navy for all the camping & boating they did. 

 

Source: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/576/ mainly around pages 102-103, and maps a dozen or so pages back.