The Tobacco Diaries: Things are getting interesting

Week 12: Cutting

The first setting of tobacco is ready to be cut and put in the barn for firing. It's hard to believe that in just a few short months it went from this...

to this...

Each plant is cut individually by hand using one of the cutting knives shown below.

After being cut, and waiting about an hour or two, the plants are spiked onto a stick. Basically the plants are speared about five or six to a stick so that they can be hung in the barn to be cured. To be transferred from the field to the barn, the sticks are hung on tobacco wagons and pulled either with trucks or tractors.

This wagon is loaded, covered, and ready to head to the barn. The black sheet protects the plants from being burned and also aids in wilting the leaves. The tobacco needs to wilt for a couple of days before it is ready to be hung in the barn and fired. Depending on the size and weight of the tobacco, approximately four acres can be put in a barn.

This tobacco is ready to be put in the barn. 

We are now entering, in my opinion, the most labor intensive/stressful part of growing dark fired tobacco. Not only is getting the tobacco from field to barn extremely hard work, after the barn is fired you have the added stress of checking the fires to make sure they don't get too hot and potentially burn the barn down. It's tricky business building a fire in a wood structure! More on that process in the next post.


Until then, God Bless!