All agricultural leases and contracts hereafter made between landlord and tenant for a period of one year or from year to year, whether such tenant pay a specified rental or share in the crops grown, such year shall be from December first to December first, and such period of time shall constitute a year for agricultural tenancies in lieu of the law and custom heretofore prevailing, namely from January first to January first. In all cases of such tenancies a notice to quit of one month as provided in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 42-14 shall be applicable. If on account of illness or any other good cause, the tenant is unable to harvest all the crops grown on lands leased by him for any year prior to the termination of his lease contract on December first, he shall have a right to return to the premises vacated by him at any time prior to December thirty-first of said year, for the purpose only of harvesting and dividing the remaining crops so ungathered. But he shall have no right to use the houses or outbuildings or that part of the lands from which the crops have been harvested prior to the termination of the tenant year, as defined in this section.

This section shall only apply to the counties of Alamance, Anson, Ashe, Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Duplin, Edgecombe, Gaston, Greene, Hoke, Jones, Lenoir, Lincoln, Montgomery, Onslow, Pender, Person, Pitt, Robeson, Sampson, Wayne and Yadkin. (Pub. Loc. 1929, c. 40; Pub. Loc. 1935, c. 288; Pub. Loc. 1937, cc. 96, 600; Pub. Loc. 1941, c. 41; 1943, c. 68; 1945, c. 700; 1949, c. 136; 1953, c. 499, s. 1; 1955, c. 136; 1959, c. 1076; 1981, c. 97, s. 1.)