HADLEY — There are TV shows with “friends” in the title and we all have enough Facebook friends to fill the Mullins Center, but the sort of companions who help you bring in the tobacco harvest on a hot weekend in August are the ones you want with you always.

Lawrence Plain Road (Route 47)

It’s a six-tractor operation, including one that’s been chugging for 75 years, but the twenty-some people on the ground — seemingly family and working hard — are clearly enjoying each other’s company, while gathering up giant just-chopped tobacco leaves.

In an assembly line to rival Motor City, they haul the leaves to the “horse” to be “speared” by former Hopkins Academy superstars including Andrew Ciaglo and Braeden Tudryn, whereupon the “carriers” muscle it up to the tractor, where “loader” extraordinaire Eileen Kelley loads each bunch onto the rack.

“It keeps you young, so we tell ourselves,” jokes Kelley, who exhorts the crew below like a third base coach.

And with shirtless Eddie Kelley at the wheel, the snorting machine rattles away to the big barn over yonder, where the leaves will be hung from the rafters. Another tractor pulls right up like a cab at the airport, Eileen Kelley jumping off one and onto another as the vigorous loading slows not for a second.

Two of these gatherers, Tracy Kelley and Chris Sadlowski, are longtime partners in the enterprise, along with their husbands, Paul and Jeff.

“We do this for fun!” says Sadlowski. “Every day is a family reunion with us. We all love being out here, getting to work with each other, it’s a blast!”

“Same time every year,” Tracy Kelley concurs. “Plant in the greenhouses starting in April, transfer to the fields about June, harvest in August.”

The hatchet-chopping started early this morning. “We like it to wilt in the sun for a while,” said Kelley. “It’s starting to get humid, that helps too. But let me get rid of these bundles.”

That done, she surveys the scene. Not often is she able to pause long enough to appreciate this fine-tooled endeavor. “There’s a sister-in-law, another sister-in-law, nephews, cousins, some older kids that we hire. The couple over there are volunteering with us. It’s quite the production,” she marvels. “My sons are out there in the barn, hanging.”

Uh, did you say volunteering?

“Oh yeah. So grateful for our friends and family who just come out and help us, without any expectation. All are willing and wonderful. And we all have full-time jobs!” said Kelley, a program manager for Optum Health.

The farm takes the whole gang to the Whately Inn at season’s end, but some view the toil itself as reward enough.

“It’s my last week of freedom,” joked carrier Beth Antes, who grew up on a farm in Conway and teaches fourth grade in Sunderland.

The Sadlowskis, meanwhile, Chris and Jeff, always plan a two-week vacation during harvest time.

“Vacation day!” somebody hollered, and everybody laughed.

The constant hum of tractors is overridden only by a passing Harley or the whine of small aircraft overhead.

Virtually everyone here can drive a tractor, some learning as early as 9 or 10. “All you had to do was keep it in the row,” said Chris Sadlowski. “As you got older you had more responsibilities. We all worked through college. We did it together, we just loved to be out in the field.”

“There is an honor to this,” she added, “something pretty amazing to do.”

Prime wrapper

The tobacco grown here is used as wrappers for high-end cigars. The crop has rebounded in recent years after a gap caused by cigar makers using (wince) wrapping made of paper.

“They homogenized it!” cries Eddie Kelley, taking a quick break from his tractor.

Hadley’s rich soil and the region’s humidity have a lot to do with the plant’s success.

“We’re just a touch behind Cuba, the only other place where you get tobacco of this quality,” said Eddie Kelley, “The Carolinas are known for cigarette tobacco but this — this is prime wrapper!”

Country strong

Everyone’s moving and yakking and laughing, but geez what a workout. Is there anything to the old cliche of farm kids having an advantage in strength and agility when it comes to sports?

“No doubt about it,” said Eileen Kelley, feeding the rack. “You have no choice!”

“It means you don’t have to lift weights as much. I think it definitely gives you an edge,” said Andrew Ciaglo, 21, a 1,000-point scorer at Hopkins and skilled spearer, who truly seems to enjoy the work.

“It’s because of the people,” said Ciaglo, not missing a beat with the spear. “Everyone’s close to each other, everyone talks about stuff. You have to TRY to make it boring.”

Of his prowess manning the station: “You take the plant, try to find the sweet spot, and spear it through. Four or five of them make a lath, then we give it to the carriers, and it’s up on the rack.”

He’ll be playing basketball at Elms College and pitching for the baseball team. He learned a pretty good curveball, he says, from his dad, Hadley legend Fred Ciaglo.

Is he as good as the old man? “Some would say yeah,” he grins. “But I don’t know, I’ve never seen him pitch.”

Terri Earle’s four kids were all stars at Hopkins, and her youngest, Owen, just left for football practice in Amherst, after spending half the day up in the barn hanging tobacco.

“The balance you need when you’re standing on the rafters — you can’t teach that,” said Earle. “When you’re working it out in your brain that kind of balance and strength, using different muscles, it’s a special kind of training. After a workout like that I think he’s ready for training camp,” she said.

The mom herself played basketball and softball at Western New England. “I moved away and came back,” she smiles. “A small town like this, you can’t beat it.”

“We all grew up together,” said the patriarch of the operation in the big orange shirt and suspenders, Jeff Sadlowski, 60.

Sadlowski’s grandfather, Anthony Sadlowski, who lived to be 101, bought the farm in 1947. “He worked with horses, bought his first tractor in 1949, the John Deere B, which, as you can see, still runs.”

He describes his relationship with his grandfather as “two peas in a pod. He had a sixth grade education but was smart as a whip. Frugal, never went on vacation. He built quite a place here.”

Harvesting tobacco comes with an endless set of procedures. It’s not exactly picking strawberries and eating them in the car on the way home. Hanging the leaves in the barn to cure is just the beginning.

The patriarch takes the columnist to the barn and describes a process that starts on a damp day in October, when the leaves are taken down, removed from the stalks, sorted, piled, pressed, folded, bundled in manila paper and trucked away to Connecticut, for further transport to Pennsylvania and a company called Lancaster Leaf.

As for cigars, Sadlowski often has one in his teeth while he works, but off-duty is the time to savor a good ’gar, he says, a Nicaraguan, perhaps, or a Charter Oak, or one drenched in Kentucky bourbon.

“If you’re ever in Tampa with your wife, visit J.C. Newman’s,” he advises. “They make a Black Diamond. All hand-rolled. You can sit right out front and smoke your cigar. Get one for your wife, too.”

Bob Flaherty is an author, radio personality and former Gazette writer. His monthly Gazette column, “Chance Encounters,” is about our neighbors going about their daily lives.